Quote:
Originally Posted by Terranova
Hi. The other night I was looking at Mars through my binos and noticed, to my excitement, a faint star southeast of Mars. My star chart app tells me it might be star M77 which I think is a nebula????? This was 8:30 pm.
Any thoughts?
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I've just turned back a few nights using stellarium. M77 is a galaxy, Mag 8.9ish. Between it and Mars there are many stars of higher magnitude that may have been what you were looking at. It looks to me as though they are 15+ degrees apart, which is a pretty big chunk of sky. You may be able to use stellarium or similar to determine your field of view in your binoculars, and find out what it was likely to be?
I'd be interested to find out what it was, and its cool that you've picked up a faint object, for sure!