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I often recommend to beginning sky-watchers that they try looking at the night sky with a large pair of binoculars (look for large objective-lenses and not too much magnification) rather than a telescope.

The nebulae and larger Messier objects are beautiful and approachable with bright handheld optics.

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A small bit of advice from me: consider the weight of the binoculars when buying them. They can be too heavy to hold for more than a minute - especially large ones made for astronomy. You will either want a tripod (which is inconvenient to carry around and set up), or you’d want the binoculars to be smaller in size.

Or you can buy image stabilizing binoculars which mechanically keep the image steady in your view despite the slight motion of your hands.

I didn't know this was a thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image-stabilized_binoculars

For any practical viewing with binoculars you do need a good tripod - otherwise instead of stars you’ll see shaky lines. Unlike daytime viewing your eye/brain doesn’t eliminate small shakes, or maybe it’s just harder to stabilize binoculars when looking up.

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