Some more newbie q's?

[LAW (Murphy)]

I've been loving my telescope and all the information and inspiration on this site but there's a few things I'm struggling with. How do you find objects you can't see? Like faint galaxies, nebula etc. I wanted to test out Backyard EOS last night but there wasn't really any bright targets (my backyard is quite narrow so I have a limited strip of sky). I settled on NGC7009 but I couldn't see it through my Telrad. I tried using the setting circles and (once I worked out which direction to set them ) I still couldn't find it!

I'm very tempted by the digital setting circle article as I have quite a few of the components already and a brand new soldering iron I haven't played with yet, but is that the best way? Without a 'goto' function is there a 'knack' to finding faint targets?

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

First of, what sort of equipment do you have?
Secondly, a telrad is only used on the brighter stars, if you cannot see it without the telrad, you won't see it with the telrad.
Do you have any charts? Starhopping is a skill that takes a little practice to find your way around the skies, but once you have done it a few times it gets much easier. My method is to use a telrad or laser finder to get to the nearest neked eye star to my target, then switch to using the 9x50 finder on mys scope to hop to it's vicinity, then use my lowest power eyepiece to search for it.
It is only practice!

Malcolm

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Yep, the age old art of star hopping. I'm still hopeless at it at times. It took me half an hour to find NGC1365 two nights ago. It didn't help that it wasn't visible in the eyepiece even when pointed at it due to haze.

I find Stellarium with the extra stars loaded helps zero in on targets. But even with red screen it mucks up night vision. I think a GOTO scope would be the best idea.

[LAW (Murphy)]

Thanks guys, I didn't think the Telrad would magically make things visible but I thought there might be a trick (like "line up the third ring with something, hold out your tongue...) but that's cool, I'm happy to 'star hop' for a while yet. I'll just enjoy my time without a goto until I learn where stuff is rather than relying on a machine.

[cmknight (Chris)]

@ Kevin ... lower your screen brightness if you are using a laptop with a star chart program on night mode. You'd be surprised how low you can go when your eyes are dark-adapted.

[Suzy]

Hi Murphy,
What's the size of your telescope???

I've listed below some tips for you.

Observe when there is no moon around. The moonlit sky at magnitude minus 12 is far too bright for many of the faint fuzzies like galaxies and nebulae.
Tonight for instance, the moon doesn't rise till 10.30pm, so NGC 7009 (The Saturn Nebula) in Aquarius will be at a good height in the sky to see it before the moon rises. This is actually on my list, probably observe it tonight if the clouds disappear.
I find this moon app for my smart phone extremely helpful to plan my moonless night sessions.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....android&hl=en


Star hopping is a great fun & rewarding experience. If I can do it anyone can Takes me a while, But I eventually get there.
Search images-the ones in this forum are a great guide (in the astrophotography forum- perform a search function). Print it out and take it with you to the scope. Also, download a sky programme such as Stellarium which is free and do a zoom to reveal the star field surrounding the object. If you're using a newtonian telescope, you will need to look at the picture upside down.
When star hopping, it helps to make shapes out of star groups when star hopping to an object.

Try using a star hop to the Silver Coin galaxy in Sculptor (NGC 253)- that's a nice simple star hop which uses a triangle shaped asterism of stars & the very bright star Deneb Kaitos as your guide.

Good quality eyepieces come into their own here. They offer better light transmission and contrast than plossils, especially when chasing really faint objects. And they have a much bigger field of view! I speak of Naglers & Pentax & the like if price is not an issue. I believe one should spend as much on eyepieces as on the scope . However, the plossls work fine, they'll see you through.

Keep your eyepieces clean. A LensPen is a great thing to have for a quick clean up.

Make sure your eyes are properly dark adapted- 10-20 mins. It'll make the world of difference.

Get the object location as high in the sky as you can without breaking your neck at Zenith. Anything above 40 deg should be good (too much pollution in the lower atmosphere).

Observing when you have light sources around you isn't a good idea. Switch off all lights and if the neighbours light is on shining directly in your path, use a dark hood over your head.

Don't drink and drive a scope. It has something to do with depleting oxygen from the eyesight.

Learn to use the art of averted vision. Some helpful information can be read here.

Many planetary nebulae & galaxies can take high magnification well. Perhaps you are using too low a power and not picking them up easily enough.

The more you observe, the better you will get at picking out faint fuzzies- trust me. Eventually (and it won't take long) with many of those faint objects, you will be classing them as rather bright because you'll see even fainter ones when you get good.

Regularly visit the observation forum here- there is a lot to be learned there. Reading peoples reports are extremely helpful for visual observing- you'll get some good star hopping ideas, objects of interest, ideas of what to expect through the eyepiece etc. It really is an invaluable resource. May I suggest if you haven't already done so, starting an observation log book of your own.

I'm glad you're deciding to use the scope manually. I really do think it's the best way to learn. Having done three years of manually star hopping before getting electronic guidance, the best learning I got was from doing so. Everything that I learned the manual way I can find relatively easily without a map & know it's place in the sky- I'm really proud of that retained knowledge. Now, I just let the machine guide me and I hate the fact that I've viewed many objects without even knowing where they sit in the sky, therefore, I'm not learning anything new that I can point to visually off the top of my head anymore. Manual star hopping is something that I plan on doing a lot more of which is why I bought a little 4" dob for. I'd kid myself using my larger scope with the go-to on manually- I'd know within 30mins of tearing my hair out, I'd be quickly flicking that switch!
Electronic guidance has a great upside though because you can get through a lot more objects in one night without losing precious good sky time. And that was what ultimately drew me to going electronic as our weather in Queensland was quite poor for a long time- so time was of the essence.

There's some rather lengthy and detailed posts I did here that might be of help to you regarding starting out.
Refer to my post no# 13, 14, 15. Yes, my post was thaaaat long!

A very helpful thread here on planetary nebulae that got made into a sticky.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=79684


Regarding digital setting circles...
I've found an article written by Denis (a fellow forum member), in the projects & articles menu.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-434-0-0-1-0.html


All the best Murphy & have fun and remember, very soon IT WILL GET MUCH EASIER!

Suzy.

P.S I forgot to add an important thing when observing those faint fuzzies- averted vision! It's now been added above with a link.

[LAW (Murphy)]

wow, thanks Suzy! The time you spend with us beginners is fantastic and very much appreciated.

I've added your tips to my astronomy notepad and I'm really looking forward to finding my first galaxy!

Thanks everyone for your help, this has to be the most helpful and polite forum for any of my hobbies, so thanks!

Unfortunately I was on dayshift last week when the moon was in the evening sky and now I'm back on nightshift the moon is in the morning sky I just can't win!

[Suzy]

Originally Posted by LAW

Unfortunately I was on dayshift last week when the moon was in the evening sky and now I'm back on nightshift the moon is in the morning sky I just can't win!

That's gotta hurt!

And thank you for your kind words.

P.S. Ooops nearly forgot to get back to you on the NGC 7009 (The Saturn Nebula).

Using my 10" dob, I found it in my 22mm ep (50X) which showed up as a very small round blue disc. Not much bigger than stars, but even though it can be confused with a star, you will however pick out the difference if you look carefully because it does NOT take on a stellar appearance, rather more disc like. Changing to a 15mm ep (70X) revealed a more intense colour however it wasn't much bigger, but I could make out something going on surrounding it, i.e. some elongation on either side of the disc which prompted further obs at high magnification. So I threw on a 10mm ep 140X) which revealed more detail and was considerably larger to observe albeit a bit fuzzier. It looked like it had a tight ring around it, the nodules on either side could easily be seen. It blinks in and out (as is the case with many round planetary nebs I've come to notice). I could see why it's aptly named the Saturn Nebula.

P.S.S. In my previous post I forgot to add an important thing about averted vision so I've added it into my previous post listed in the tips.

[cmknight (Chris)]

I couldn't agree more about averted vision, Suzy. Even bright planetaries, like the Ring and the Dumbbell need averted vision to bring out any detail. Both the Eskimo Nebula and the Owl Nebula are especially difficult, even with averted vision.