Where to next?

[darrinph]

Hi all,

I am a newbie to the sport (makes me feel much fitter) of star gazing so forgive my ignorance if I should have posted this question elsewhere. I recently purchased a small telescope (90mm skywatcher refractor) and after a few months working out which end to look through I have had the pleasure of seeing Mars (I think, very small but you get what you pay for), Saturn (very small also but enormously impressed), many hours lookind at the moon, and as soon as this rain stops I have every intention of adding an early morning Jupiter to the list.

While I have every intention of spending many more months of studying these planets, I am unsure where to go to next for wow factor with such a small telescope. The moon and planets were an obvious place to start but when it comes to deeper space I have no idea.

As I am sure many members will agree, my wife holds the purse strings and to have any chance of upgrading my gear, I need simple wow factor to show and convince her. Any ideas?

many thanks

Dazza

[Kevnool]

Take her to a star party or a viewing night from your local astonomy group and then things might change....cheers kev.

[wavelandscott]

While I can't speak to WOW factor in great detail...I believe that Sue French, a monthly article writer for Sky & Telescope (and Aussie version), seems to specialize in what you can see through "smaller" scopes...

She has a book titled "Celestial Sampler, 60 small-scope tours for starlit nights"...the book is a compilation of some of her best monthly articles.

The book is broken down by season and is targeted to beginners and those with scopes 100 mm in aperture or less...but of course these same things will look even better in bigger scopes! It is a nice handy book with lots of suggestions and tips for things to see with charts and maps and in my opinion generally helpful information.

In terms of what other objects might be WOWISH...you might give multiple stars a whirl...doubles, triples (and more) all in different colors and combinations...like jewels in the night sky.

Good Luck!

Oh and welcome to IIS!

[JimmyH155]

I have a 90 mm refractor (Celestron). It is one of my favourites because of its "grab 'n go" capability - I can carry it on my shoulder:D Recently I took it to the Bunya Mountains as it is small enough to fit in car with all that other stuff for 3 nights, which would last for 3 months.
As you say, for the Moon, you need no bigger scope - I ended up looking at the Moon in the morning, and it was just as exciting as looking through my 12" truss Dob.
Try a few open clusters :D- notably NGC 4755 the Jewel box and some in Carina this time of year. Also try looking at doubles - plenty of beauts around Crux and Carena.(Alpha Crux, Alpha Centaurus etc.) Nothing wrong with the 90 mm though. I just love refractors, and they are so RUGGED. I dropped one on a concrete floor once - no damage at all;) They are easy to get good focus as well and no collimation worries.:)

[darrinph]

Thank you gentlemen, I will take your advice on board. These forums are a goldmine of information,

cheers

Darrin

[mark3d]

i think people get impressed when they get some knowledge about what they are looking at.

the orion nebula (M42) is easy to find and is very impressive to look at. its enough to wow on its own, but i think its even better when people learn that it is a stellar nursery with 4 hot blue stars that are a few million years old (versus our sun 5 billion), their energy causes the surrounding gas to flouroesce and its all located 12,000 light years away.

pictures on the web will always be prettier than those in a telescope but seeing it for real, thinking the light that hits your retina left the nebula when humans were cavemen, and what it must have gone past on its way here.. thats cool too :)

[glenc]

The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light years away or 1,300 according to:
http://kencroswell.com/OrionNebulaDistance.html

[renormalised]

Wow factors for a 90mm.....hmmm. At this time of year, minus a Moon in the sky, you could try Omega Centauri (globular cluster), the Jewel Box (open cluster), Alpha Centauri (triple star...although you'll only see the two main stars), Eta Carina Nebula, M6 and M7 in Scorpio (open clusters), Albireo (double star in Cygnus), Epsilon1,2 Lyrae (the famous double-double star in Lyra), Ring Nebula (M57 in Lyra), and there's a raft of others that could be mentioned.

You could even dazzle here with some statistics. Say you had Antares in your eyepiece...you could say that if the Sun was the size of a marble (1cm) then the star you're looking at would be a ball 7 metres across. Better still, tell her if she wanted to drive her car from one side of Antares to the other, it would take her 1152 years to make the journey!!! (doing 100km/hr). That should boggle her brain a bit:D