DS obesrving in royal nation park??

[allsmiles (Ahmad)]

Hey all,
I'm heading to the royal national park this saturday (if forecast is good). I'm guessing light pollution should be considerably less than the inner west.
Which DSOs will i be able to see clearly with an 8" dob?
thanks

[renormalised (Carl)]

It'll be better than being in town, but the skyglow will still be a killer. However, you'll be able to see plenty of DSO's with the 8"....especially if you have an OIII or UHC filter attached. As far as what you'll see, if you have a set of star charts with you, you should be able to see pretty much all of the NGC and IC catalogue objects that will be up for this time of year. An 8" has a limiting mag of around 12.4 (under your conditions), so go through your charts and see what's on the offing.

[allsmiles (Ahmad)]

umm this might sound stupid but is a star chart basically some sort of star atlas?? can i just use stellarium instead?
also how long do you have to wait after the moon sets to start seeing DSOs clearly?
always a great help renormalised

[renormalised (Carl)]

Looks like the "playschool clock" for the Moon in the IIS sidebar says it sets at 1:55am this morning. So you're going to have to stay up pretty late!!!! Once it sets, you'll be fine. Give it 15-25 minutes to be on the safe side. Yes, a star chart is part of a star atlas....it's just one of the pages.

Yes, you could use stellarium and print off tonight's chart.

[byronpaul (Paul)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Yes, you could use stellarium and print off tonight's chart.

When you say "print off tonight's chart" ..... how do you do that in Stellarium.

Does it have report features?

[renormalised (Carl)]

I haven't used stellarium that much, but it should, like most other programs, have a print function. You just print off the page you're looking at. I can using Starry Night..and most others like Cartes du Ciel, The Sky etc, print off a copy of what's on screen. It doesn't need a reporting function to do so. If it doesn't and you have no way of printing off a chart, then I suggest you get another program to do so...like Cartes du Ciel.

P.S. Just a had a read of the user's manual.....the only way you'll be able to get a chart printed out is to take a screenshot and import it into an image processing app' like PS, The GIMP or PSP and print it from there.

[allsmiles (Ahmad)]

ill just take the laptop instead
as for the moon setting times they seem to be one day late on this website
my calender/time is set correctly so i dont see where the problem's coming from
today it set at ~3am yet it says 1.55am...strange

[Kal (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by allsmiles

ill just take the laptop instead
as for the moon setting times they seem to be one day late on this website
my calender/time is set correctly so i dont see where the problem's coming from
today it set at ~3am yet it says 1.55am...strange

My guess is that the moon set and moon rise times are correct for the particular day listed. However, technically speaking, the moon rise time was for the current days moon, but the moon set time was for the previous days moon. In other words, it correctly listed the 1:55am moonset time for the day (what you would have considered the previous days moon however - 1:55am Friday morning) and the moonrise time listed was for the next moonrise that occured chronologically speaking (but on the same day)

In other words, the 3:04AM moonset that you see listed atm happened this morning, to know tonights moonset time you need to look at SUNDAYS moonset time.

[allsmiles (Ahmad)]

yeah that seems right
silly me