Recommended visual objects for 4" refractor

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Hi guys,

What objects do you guys recommend for visual observing from heavily light polluted suburbia with a 4" refractor. I don't have any LP filters either. North Eastern area is not very good as there's houses and trees in the way. South, due North and most of West are OK.

I had a mate over on Friday who wanted to see my setup, so I showed him several objects, but most of what I tried was very faint and hard to spot. We did M4, M80, M7, 47 Tucane, Jewel box, Antares, Jupiter, Moon, M57 (barely spotted, and I mean barely spotted). I couldn't think of too much else to be honest.

We didn't do M31 (packed up at midnight) or Omega Centauri (damn tree in the way). Seeing was poor imho, so I didn't push magnifcation more than 225x (really the limit for my setup anyways) and try and split doubles.

I'd never seen M80 or M57 before, so they were firsts to me! We're planning more viewing sessions, hence my asking you guys on what your thoughts were. We didn't try any galaxies as they're usually faint and you can't see bugger all from suburbia in reality imho.

The viewing session was good - next door neighbours had a few visitors, a boy, his father and the boy's best friend, so they enjoyed a few hours of viewing pleasure. They were mightily impressed with it all and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I guess that's my bit for the IYA!!!

Dave

[Alchemy (Clive)]

i would have thought a cruise around eta carinae could be a possibility early, SMC , later the LMC, M8 ,saggitarius star cloud, norma star cloud.

im not a visual so it depends how light polluted you are.

[dannat (Daniel)]

yes this time of year just cruise sagittarius & scorpio - do you have a planetarium program like stellarium - in it you can slect for M & nebula to a ceratin magnitude - will bring up lots of things for you

or else look for one of glenc lists in observational astronomy - they are extensive

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Great ideas Clive & Daniel! I lament my missing Burnham's Celestial guides. I wish they'd release a digital version of this - it'd be phreaking awesome!

Dave

[astro744]

Hi Dave,

You can get each constellation listed in BCH as an observing list in a format compatible with SkyTools3. The list are free but of course SkyTools is not. There are many other free observing 'lists' available to registered users of skyTools 2 or 3.

Get the Pro version if you can since it has the Real Time feature and lots more stars.

SkyTools can show objects only visible with a 4" refractor and with the eyepieces you choose if you so desire. You can have reversed or not views as well as upside down or not views. You can print off observing lists for a particular evening and even print off finder charts at various field widths for each object.

Enjoy!

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Thanks, I'll have to check it out :-) so much to buy, so little money lol...

Dave

[RobF (Rob)]

David, I would strongly recommend downloading the freeware version of Astroplanner, then getting around to setting up your local horizons in it sometime.

Its just so nice to check what will be up, when, and even make a few notes beforehand (not to mention observing notes when you have found something). You can always go online to check what the various Messier/NGC objects are once you've narrowed down the playing field a bit.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

That's a good idea as well. I'll probably end up buying a host of astro software - ccdsoft, sky 6, maxim dl are all on my hitlist. Eventually. I've heard good things about astroplanner, and skytools looks really nice too. I probably don't use the scope often enough to justify such large monetary expenses on the software, but it's nice to have it there when you need it I guess. In the absense of a permanent mount, and accurate polar align and no guiding, I'm probably going to give imaging a miss for the interim.

Dave

[goober (Doug)]

Hi Dave,

I'm a 4" refractor owner and love it (reformed Dob owner who saw sense!). I'm confined to Melbourne's SE, which is pretty much the centre of the city these days. If you scan for my obs reports in the Observation Reports folder here you'll see the things I've bagged from a light polluted site.

Some tips...
- with Sag, Oph and Sco up at the moment, you should be able to bag all the Messier globs around there.
- double stars are wonderful, and there are tons of them.
- the later in the evening you go, the better you're scope will perform (people turn the lights out and go to bed, thus the skies get darker, and the atmosphere seems to settle down).
- nothing compares to taking your scope to a dark sky site.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Agreed about dark sky, but no car...kills that idea pretty quickly!

Dave