M83, M68 & Ngc 5139

[Solanum]

Got my 10" Dob back yesterday after having the glue cleaned off the mirror. Took it out last night and had my clearest view yet of Saturn, Cassini Div was clearly visible right the way round.

To my question: I was looking for M83 and M68 without any luck, though I did find NGC5139 which was pretty spectacular. I was trying find M68 from the right hand star of Corvus and M83 from the second star up in Hydra (sorry, at work so don't have the star designations to hand), but failed!

Any advice for finding them? I guess a good star chart, but actually I find that whilst the higher magnitude stars really stand out brilliantly in the scope, there are sooooooo many lower magnitude stars that I do find it a bit difficult finding which is which. So any general advice there would be welcomed also.

I knew a goto scope would be easier! ;)

[rmcpb]

A flippant answer is the only one........... practice :)

The lower magnitude stars are a bit off putting in the beginning but you will get the hang of it after a while if you keep practicing. Try printing out a range of maps from a planitarium program at different magnifications so it will look similar to what you see in the eyepiece.

Cheers

[glenc]

Here is a map from SkyMapPro for 10pm DST. It should match the sky as you see it.

[Solanum]

Thanks for the map, though I have pretty much the same thing from Xephem. I was probably just being a bit useless. I was expecting to be able to see the objects in the finderscope, but didn't seem to be able to. perhaps because the mag 7 is spread out over 11 arcmins, so they're pretty dim? Anyway, scanning around the area with a 35mm eyepiece in the scope didn't help either. Probably a mag 7 star chart at the eyepiece is the way for me to go....