You may remember from schooldays that light travels 186,000 miles (300,000 km) in one second. So the distance it travels in a year is huge - hard to comprehend. The nearest star to us (apart from the Sun) is about 4 light years away. If you were able to drive there by car at a steady 100mph it would take more than 40 million years to get there! The Andromeda Galaxy is getting on for a million times that distance away!
The Messier catalogue of just over 100 objects is a useful one for beginners to use as a check list of things to see and/or photograph.