View Single Post
  #23  
Old 23-12-2004, 01:03 PM
iceman's Avatar
iceman (Mike)
Sir Post a Lot!

iceman is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Gosford, NSW, Australia
Posts: 36,761
heh sorry, i'll elaborate.

M42 is a catalog code for a Deep-Space Object (DSO). The "M" stands for Messier, some guy (Charles Messier) who did a list of deep-space objects to view. So 42 is just the 42nd in his list.

M42 is the Orion Nebula, which is a big area of gas and dust where stars are being born. It's in the Orion constellation. Through the telescope it looks like a hazy patch of gas/dust surrounding 4 small stars.

A DSO (as I said) is a Deep-Space Object, basically, everything that's outside of our solar system (which is the moon and planets, asteroids, comets). DSO's include stars (!), nebula, galaxies, globular clusters, open clusters, etc.

FOV is Field-Of-View, the area of sky you see when you look into your eyepiece.


I suggest you go to your local bookshop and check out the astronomy/science section, or to your local telescope supplier. There should be some begineers books on astronomy, which will tell you all about these terms and give you a great head start.
Reply With Quote