Thank you for your great post, Mary Anne!

When we look at the night sky (without help), our eyes are always attracted to where there are concentrations of stars (the milky way, the Pleiades, the Big Dipper) or light like the Moon; when we take binoculars, the Moon becomes even more interestings, the Pleiades are best that way, the Hercules globular cluster or the Orion Nebula the Perseus double cluster are real spots out there and Jupiter gets satellites and comets show their beauty!
We take a telescope, the Moon is still better, the planets become fascinating as Jupiter gets bands and Saturn rings and moons and Mars gets spottish , Venus a phase, Mercury too, Uranus and Neptune become visible, the Messier objects become jewels.

Then we realize some objects are never photographed or even looked at because they're just a lonely point of light: like Betelgeuse, Procyon, Sirius, Castor and Pollux, Rigel, etc...However, Vega through binoculars is more intersting because there are lots of other stars near it. Double stars are popular too: Albireo in Cygnus!
It's our urge to see many things at once (like meteorite shower) instead of just one star or colors on a planet instead of plain white like Venus or Mercury.
A solar eclipse is the greatest experience as both the Sun and the Moon seem to have the same size as the large shadow all around us and the sequences of events before during and after are so fast but slow enough to graps them all.
We have a hit parade of objects to look at depending on what we use to gaze at the sky, but it's not really fair. Some of the lonely "unintesting" stars are significant in other ways: for instance, one celestial body is an asteroid; it's just a point but the nex day, it's elsewhere! (that, we have to know in advance); another star is known to have one or more planets around it! It becomes interesting for another reason than its presence up there (but we have to know that too).
Who knows? More of those forgotten stars will shine in our minds for other unexpected reasons, in the coming years!
It changes all the time as our knowledge of what's going on up there improves day by day.
And it will get better after our time too. For the next generations.

Have a great year 2004 too, Mary Anne!