Quick List for November Gazing?

[ekendra]

Would anyone be generous enough with their knowledge to make a quick list of objects that are easy for a beginner to locate in November 2011?

We'd be very appreciative.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

I am far from the most knowledagble here but a couple of really quick and easy ones would be

Jupiter (Obvious and really really easy to find, and getting to be in a reasonable position to observe as soon as it gets dark)

47 Tucanae Globular cluster, near the small Magellanic cloud and visible to the naked eye.

Tarantula nebula in the Large Magellanic cloud

M42/Great nebula in Orion.

All pretty big and bright and easy to find and all with some wow factor. I had my scope out last night for the first time in weeks and observed all of them in the couple of hours darkness I had before I had to go to bed (First clear night in ages would be a Sunday night wouldn't it) The transperancy was not too flash and was falling off anyway so it was time for bed or time to wait a few hours (Not sure about anywhere else but we do seem to get a fair bit of haze a couple of hours after dark where I am and it then often clears later in the night)

For a relative newbie it was a bit of a thrill to actually see the great red spot for the first time with my own eyes! And no amount of knowing that Jupiter has a roughly ten hour day prepares you for realising that you have noticed it move visually across the disc of the planet in the time you have been observing (I went back to Jupiter a couple of times over an hour or two so assuming roughly ten hours rotation that is about 36 degrees an hour!)

[ekendra]

Thank you Paul. That certainly is a good start.

[blink138 (Pat)]

one of our amazing members gave me this, and i use it an awful lot now i cant rember his name but he did say it was free for all
pat
(hope i got the attachment right...here goes)
no it did not i will try again

[blink138 (Pat)]

anyhow it is called the souther astronomer

[Robh (Rob)]

Originally Posted by blink138

anyhow it is called the souther astronomer

I think you are referring to me.
Go to ...
http://sites.google.com/site/souther...for-each-month

However, some of the targets are not easy for beginners.

Regards, Rob

[ekendra]

We had a good night.

It was short and sweet because the boys have school tomorrow.

First I collimated using the cool new laser thingy-ma-bob. Pretty straightforward although the secondary seemed to have a mind of its own. We got it close enough and then worked on getting the TelRad in synch with the scope. Not hard either;especially since Jupiter was distinguishably bright in the sky and we could use that as a reference.

At first we observed Jupiter. What a beautiful sight. The lines were clearly detectable with the 10mm via 2x Barlow. We're not sure if the three tiny dots close by were a few of Jupiter's moon or just stars that happened to be in the viewfinder. We spent quite a while checking it out.

Then we turned eastward towards the rising Orion. Finding the Orion Nebula was a bit harder but eventually we located it. Even the non-coloured image our 10" Newtonian provided it was still quite a sight. If I was alone I would've scoped it for a long time but the kids needed to get to bed. I guess that's something to look forward to for next time.

[michaellxv (Michael)]

Try this one http://skymaps.com/index.html each month there is a chart you can print with a list of objects.