I'm going out to a dark site tonight, with my (gasp!) wife!! She's not really into astronomy much yet, but after a few hours of bombarding her with star-light, she's bound to come home a convert
So, i'm hoping to go galaxy hunting tonight..
Can anyone recommend some good, easy to find, relatively bright, visually stunning galaxies for me, my wife and my dob? Surely that's not too much to ask..
Just let me know the identifying number, constellation it's in, and anything else I need to know to find it.. maybe best observing magnification..
Also, as an aside when you don't have an observing plan, do you just jump around looking for something interesting, or do you work on a constellation and look at everything in that constellation?
For example, last night was clear so I just got out in the backyard at home for an hour or so, and didn't really have a plan of what I wanted to view, so I just spent time in Orion and Monoceros, and just looked at all the clusters and nebula I could find in those 2 constellations (using my starchart book).
If I was to take my wife out it would have to be 5 star with room service.......otherwise forget it.
Anyway I hope you have a good night and weather stays good.....
Latey we seem to be having permanant cloud cover over Brisbane......asif it's the sunny state.....Must be a lot Natives doing the rain dance in Brizy at the moment.
253 is a fairly large object with a relatively low surface brightness.
Its quite easy to see in your finder or with binoculars, and harder to find panning around looking for it .
Theres a couple of nice bright planetary nebs visible, ngc3132, and ngc2438, well worth a look.
If you have Cartes Du Ciel, (a great freeware chart proggie,) theres a freeware addon called rtgui, which allows you to search objects by class, magnitude etc, and even suggests lists of the best objects currently visible given your search criteria. It then opens a chart for the object you selected.....brilliant !
Hi Mike,
If you get this in time go for,
NGC, 55,253, in Sculptor.
NGC,7582,7590,7599 in Grus.
NGC,1566,1553,1549, In Dorado
There all bright enough to make it interesting.
There so much.
More than anything have a great night.
Triple-post it up Paul! Also, where do I enter those RA/Dec co-ords into my dob?
Thanks for the suggestions guys, all noted down and will be part of my hunt.. i'm still watching the clouds though, the crystal clear day has turned into a cloudy evening and I might postpone it and hope for a clear night tomorrow
Last night was really clear, wish i'd taken advantage of it then.
If your keen and up to 2am theres M104 on the border of corvus and virgo , the asterism of corvus and the bright star Spica makes it eay to find this great target . look to Regulus the alpha star of Leo and star hop around to locate some messier galaxies M96/m95 /m65/m66. move to Omega centuri then try hunting for Cent A , great object , 5 degrees north of the gobular , take it slowly averted vision is needed not to bypass it .
No probs Paul
Thanks for all the suggestions, I should've gone out last night, turned out to be clear after all So I just spent 20 minutes at home with the 11x70's, looking at Maccholz next to the Pleaides.. so nice to see them in the same FOV. Maccholz was visible as a smudge with the naked eye too, which is pretty good from my backyard.. I really need to work out the VLM in my backyard one day..
Maccholz was visible as a smudge with the naked eye too, which is pretty good from my backyard.. I really need to work out the VLM in my backyard one day..
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I was out the other night for half an hour scanning the skies with the binoculars and I was wondering what the smudge was besides Pleaides. Must have been tired that night!
Dark sky night tonight!
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Must have been tired that night!
