How to actually look
Give your eyes time. They take a surprisingly long while to adjust to darkness, and one glance at a bright phone screen resets the whole process. So leave the phone in your pocket — or at the very least dim it to the lowest setting — and let ten or fifteen minutes pass. Things appear gradually: first the brightest points, then a second layer, then the faint grain between them. Watching that happen is most of the pleasure.
Wear more than you think you need. Cold feet end a stargazing habit faster than cloud does. A blanket over a coat, proper socks, a hot drink in a lidded cup, and a chair if you have anywhere to put one — reclining changes the experience entirely, because holding your neck at an angle quietly limits how long you will stay. Choose the darkest corner available and put your back to whatever streetlight is nearest.
Let the moon be your calendar
If you want a thread to follow rather than a one-off evening, follow the moon. Look for it at roughly the same time each night and note, in a sentence, what shape it is and where in the sky it sits. Within a couple of weeks you will have felt something most of us only know as a diagram: that it moves, grows and thins on a rhythm entirely indifferent to our schedules.
