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Old 20-09-2012, 07:12 AM
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mental4astro (Alexander)
kids+wife+scopes=happyman

mental4astro is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: sydney, australia
Posts: 5,005
Hi Tony,

The Moon sets a little later every night during its phase. The only thing is while it is up it overpowers the much fainter deep sky objects. At this early phase, it is not so strong.

You can start scanning around the tail of Scorpio and into Sagittarius. I am assuming you have a chart of some kind in case you are not already familiar with the constellations. This section of the sky is littered with clusters, nebulae, and the densest star clouds in the Milky Way.

Saturn is an early evening object for now as it will shortly slip behing the sun. It is very, very far away, but the ring system is still visible. Mars, is a little higher in the early evening, but while closer (though it too will disappear behing the Sun soon) it is so much smaller that it now barely shows any semblence of a disk. Jupiter, as John mentioned, and Venus are both early morning targets. Jupiter is always a striking target, and you'll easily see its four largest moons, and at least its two main darker cloud belts. Venus will be showing a cresent at the moment.

Mid evening, and if you are at a dark site, you can have a shot at the Magellanic Clouds. These two satellite galaxies of our own Milky way are packed with their own clusters and nebulae. A slow scan of these will show up so much detail.

On one last note, I don't know you of your experience with scopes, so I apologise if you already know the following: Don't think that it is all about just ripping as much magnification out of the scope as possible. Your 4" dob will best serve you at low power with the stars proper, and leave the higher magnification for the Moon and planets. While I have 6 scopes that go from 2" through to 17.5", I love my smaller ones for the wide rich fields they provide, which is something my larger scopes can't.

Enjoy.

Mental.
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