Hi all,
How do you plan your viewing sessions - do you have particular types of target that you search for? And do you set goals in advance or do you just wing it on the night?
I spent the first couple of weeks of owning a telescope mostly scanning the skies in a fairly random fashion, looking for the quick “Wow!” objects - the moon of course, plus Jupiter, Saturn, a crescent Venus, and various interesting clumps of stars near the Southern Cross, such as the Running Chicken Nebula, Carina Nebula and the Southern Pleiades. Some I deliberately looked for and some I found by happy accident and then researched what they were later (e.g. The Jewel Box, and also the globular cluster Omega Centauri). With clear skies and a little bit of luck they were all reasonably easy to find with my basic low magnification telescope. With practice, I was even able to find them again the following night. Well, usually….
So what next?
This is probably the point at which many telescopes get put in the garage “temporarily” alongside the home exercise equipment that was going to give you back a teenage body with a set of six-pack abs. And for those who do stick at it there are probably many possibly directions to go in. Doubtless it depends on the individual.
For me it’s been going back to basics. I’ve stopped coveting bigger and more powerful telescopes and I’m learning to use what I’ve already got (an 80x400 refractor and a 150x750 Newtonian reflector). I’ll pick a very small area of sky (just part of a single constellation) and attempt to learn it more thoroughly - section by section. And I’m finding it really enjoyable and satisfying. Even a tiny area seems to contain a massive amount of intriguing patterns and potentially interesting targets.
For guidance I’ve been using the amazing free Stellarium software and have recently bought Sky Safari 5 Plus. I did try printed charts and a planisphere but found them awkward to use, with dodgy old eyes, compared to the amazing versatility and adjustable depth of the software on a laptop.
And bit by bit, little by little, I am starting to work my way around a constellation, or part of one, starting at the more obviously bright stars and then hopping from star to star. It feels a bit like trying to learn a new language - inirtially it all sounds (or in this case looks) like random noise - but over time you begin to recognise subtly different patterns. Eventually, moving round a small patch becomes as familiar as walking round the garden. Or that’s the plan anyway…
How about you? Do you have a system, or a list of targets you’d be especially interested to see, or what?
Cheers,
Chris