Hello once again,
sorry to keep posting in the same thread but I just finished my second round of my first viewing night and it was just amazing....being a beginner , the 8" dob rocks the world and shows a hell lot of amazing stuff which the naked eyes can't see especially in the light-polluted urban areas. Thanks Les & Ron for explaining me the reason of the 4 diffraction spikes seen around the stars.
I don't have a star-atlas book, I do have the Astronomy yearbook but thats for 2008, so for now, I use the following site
http://skychart.skytonight.com/obser...t/skychart.asp and print the pdf it generates and thats as easy as it can get. I have a handy compass with a LED on it, sticked a red tape on it, and bang..i had a compass with RED light. It works for me...got the sense of direction and thats it then it was easy to find the usual constellations. The stuff that I saw was - the complete Orion constellation, M42, Mars, Procyon, Cirius, Canopus, Achernar & Alpha Centauri.
The clouds/interstellar gas at M42 looked beautiful although it was a bit faint as in I wasn't able to see any colour but very crystal clear along with the stars around it. I wasn't able to really differentiate M43 from M42 but then maybe the 2x barlow + 9mm Plossl EP will help....
Mars looked like a small red ball, took me a while to focus properly on it.
After reading the replies regarding how the stars look, i was relieved that my scope works..... I did have a look at Rigel again, i could make out the 2 seperate stars but not quiet well...will try again later sometime.....
I plan to stay awake for another hour, watch my favourite planet - Saturn and then sleep...ofcourse dreaming about me sliding around the saturn rings....i just hope my EP's are able to show me the rings.....
Thank you all for helping me out in understanding how to choose a scope and helping me out with my weird questions...you really made it easy for me to enter the world of Astronomy. Even though there is a hell lot more to learn and see, for a beginner and a person like me who since childhood always wanted to see constellations and planets upclose, its really a dream come true. Just awesomely amazing.....Ice In Space & Astronomy rock....
Goodnight....well actually goodmorning....its 3.30am here....
Vivek