Please forgive me

[stopusinmyid]

Please forgive me my dopeyness but I have a question. We were out the other night looking at star clusters and Steven was using other stars and Stellarium (gotta love that program :bowdown:) as guides to get him to the clusters. Is this what you all refer to as star hopping?

[barx1963]

Thats Star Hopping. Use any program or charts, but hop from one star to another to find objects. A black art if ever there was one!

[jjjnettie]

It can be frustrating comparing the star charts to the sky when you're using a straight through finder
Another reason to own a right angle finder scope. :D

[stopusinmyid]

Cheers for that :thumbsup:.
Yeh we found we had trouble with the straight through finder on the 130EQ but we have the right angle on the dob and Steven loves it. I pick our next object to look at and he finds it. He followed a satellite with the finder the other night while I was looking through the EP. He was so proud of himself. That was our first satellite sighting, it was almost as exciting seeing Saturn and Jupiter for the first time :lol:.

[graham.hobart]

it sure is an addictive past time. It's good that you share it! I am sitting outside now waiting for the clouds to go so I can set up my guiding and my wife is inside watching the footy! She does like my pictures though.
I like my small binos for star hopping- find something interesting then point scope thataway. Great for nebula and clusters.
cheers
Graham

[leon]

Gee Graham that sounds so familiar. :lol: :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[stephenb]

Tammy, everyone will agree that 'star hopping' is one of the best skills you can learn. And as you've discovered it's not that hard to pickup and once you master it (that won't take long) you can get to objects just as fast without all that GOTO black magic :)

Stephen :thumbsup: