Do you need really dark skies or can you still find galaxies in skies that have some light but not big city light. Mackay is not to bad if you live even a bit out of town.
Is this where I get cheeky and say that you cannot miss at least some stars of the Milky Way galaxy!
My experience of big city suburban lights (Melbourne) is that you will see nothing else naked eye. You may be able to pull the Magellanic clouds out of the bright sky with binoculars. I have seen two of the Leo triplet through an 8" scope one evening.
But, in all honesty, why bother if you can get to dark skies from time to time. I don't recall seeing any detail from the suburbs - just a fuzzy patch.
The light Pollution is not to bad even a couple of kms out of Mackay, I saw the Andromeda galaxy naked eye when I was up there a couple of years ago.
You can probably pull out quite a few galaxies with an 8" scope.
You should be able to spot the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye, it's mag 4 or so. Binoculars reveal a bit more detail, even from suburbia. I can't say much about galaxies via a scope, since I really haven't spotted any with my 4" refractor yet, despite trying. I presume not enough aperture and light pollution don't help my cause!
I can see quite a few from an 8" in Sydney. Not alot of detail with exception of NGC 6744 (using averted vision, according to my notes, "sprial arms bright as").
Mate, nick off to the Kinchant dam car park area for a really good dark area. There is usually some bloke there on a saturday night looking to the heavens.
Is there anywhere you can see the globular clusters omega Centauri or 47 Tuc with the naked eye? If so you will easily see NGC 253 and NGC 55. I can see them with my 9x63 binoculars.
I can't see much from any dark site with the naked eye. But if I put my night long distance glasses (corrects a myopic condition) on I can see Omega Centauri and tuc 47 from Crago. I haven't looked for any galaxies.
Advice on Finding Galaxies
