Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon
Spending the whole night exploring star clusters and double stars in Crux (the Southern Cross) is a great way to start...
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That's true, there are quite a few nice objects right in Crux and working through them is a good exercise. But it would be remiss of us not to mention the best of what is nearby - the sorts of objects you might as well find now because you're going to spend a lot of time looking at them.
To the west (right at the moment) of Crux is Carina, home to the eta Carina nebula and NGC3532, both visible to the naked eye under dark skies. NGC3532 is a large bright open cluster and eta Carina is simply the biggest and best nebula in the sky. The great thing about viewing eta C is that it 'works' at any magnification. You need at least 2 degrees field of view to see the whole object but it looks great at 1 degree, a half a degree, right down to resolving the homunculus nebula. To the ne of Crux is the best globular cluster in he sky omega Centauri. It's easiest found by starting at beta Centauri, the fainter of the two pointers.