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Originally Posted by Dennis
Our eyes do not respond in the same way. We have Rods and Cones in our eyes that apparently help us “see”. I think Rods like daylight and allow us to see colour, whereas Cones kick in at night time and are poor at recording colour and they do not accumulate photons like a ccd chip or film.
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Sorry to be pedantic, but it's the other way around. Cones for colour and Rods for night vision. Because our Rods are on the edge of our retina and we use the Rods for night vision, this is why you use averted vision to see faint DSO's.
Now all of that is off topic...so back to the question. Stellarium is a very good program and quite powerful considering its freeware nature. But as far as providing you with a good idea of where an object is,
, it's not really the best thing to use. Best to use a star chart, either from a computer program or from a dedicated star chart book (Norton's, Uranometria, Bobroff charts etc.) Learn how to read and use a star chart by starting off with something easy like M42, and then progress onto other objects.
Powerful astronomy software will give you common names of DSO's along with their relevant catalogue number/s. If you don't have acess to such a program then simply Google it! Type in "Orion Nebula" and Google should spit out a HUGE number of sites mentioning M42.
The other thing to remember about some DSO's is "surface brightness". An object may be listed as Mag. 9 and yes, a Mag. 9 star would be easily seen through an 8" dob, but a DSO has its brightness spread over a larger area than just a point of light like a star. So a Mag. 9 DSO can appear alot fainter than Mag. 9
Hope this helps.
Peter.