Hi Murphy,
What's the size of your telescope???
I've listed below some tips for you.
Observe when there is no moon around. The moonlit sky at magnitude minus 12 is far too bright for many of the faint fuzzies like galaxies and nebulae.
Tonight for instance, the moon doesn't rise till 10.30pm, so NGC 7009 (The Saturn Nebula) in Aquarius will be at a good height in the sky to see it before the moon rises. This is actually on my list, probably observe it tonight if the clouds disappear.
I find this moon app for my smart phone extremely helpful to plan my moonless night sessions.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....android&hl=en
Star hopping is a great fun & rewarding experience. If I can do it anyone can
Takes me a while, But I eventually get there.
Search images-the ones in this forum are a great guide (in the astrophotography forum- perform a search function). Print it out and take it with you to the scope. Also, download a sky programme such as Stellarium which is free and do a zoom to reveal the star field surrounding the object. If you're using a newtonian telescope, you will need to look at the picture upside down.
When star hopping, it helps to make shapes out of star groups when star hopping to an object.
Try using a star hop to the Silver Coin galaxy in Sculptor (NGC 253)- that's a nice simple star hop which uses a triangle shaped asterism of stars & the very bright star Deneb Kaitos as your guide.
Good quality eyepieces come into their own here. They offer better light transmission and contrast than plossils, especially when chasing really faint objects. And they have a much bigger field of view! I speak of Naglers & Pentax & the like if price is not an issue. I believe one should spend as much on eyepieces as on the scope
. However, the plossls work fine, they'll see you through.
Keep your eyepieces clean. A LensPen is a great thing to have for a quick clean up.
Make sure your eyes are properly dark adapted- 10-20 mins. It'll make the world of difference.
Get the object location as high in the sky as you can without breaking your neck at Zenith. Anything above 40 deg should be good (too much pollution in the lower atmosphere).
Observing when you have light sources around you isn't a good idea. Switch off all lights and if the neighbours light is on shining directly in your path, use a dark hood over your head.
Don't drink and drive a scope. It has something to do with depleting oxygen from the eyesight.
Learn to use the art of averted vision. Some helpful information can be read
here.
Many planetary nebulae & galaxies can take high magnification well. Perhaps you are using too low a power and not picking them up easily enough.
The more you observe, the better you will get at picking out faint fuzzies- trust me. Eventually (and it won't take long) with many of those faint objects, you will be classing them as rather bright because you'll see even fainter ones when you get good.
Regularly visit the observation forum here- there is a lot to be learned there. Reading peoples reports are extremely helpful for visual observing- you'll get some good star hopping ideas, objects of interest, ideas of what to expect through the eyepiece etc. It really is an invaluable resource. May I suggest if you haven't already done so, starting an observation log book of your own.
I'm glad you're deciding to use the scope manually. I really do think it's the best way to learn.
Having done three years of manually star hopping before getting electronic guidance, the best learning I got was from doing so. Everything that I learned the manual way I can find relatively easily without a map & know it's place in the sky- I'm really proud of that retained knowledge. Now, I just let the machine guide me and I hate the fact that I've viewed many objects without even knowing where they sit in the sky, therefore, I'm not learning anything new that I can point to visually off the top of my head anymore. Manual star hopping is something that I plan on doing a lot more of which is why I bought a little 4" dob for. I'd kid myself using my larger scope with the go-to on manually- I'd know within 30mins of tearing my hair out, I'd be quickly flicking that switch!
Electronic guidance has a great upside though because you can get through a lot more objects in one night without losing precious good sky time. And that was what ultimately drew me to going electronic as our weather in Queensland was quite poor for a long time- so time was of the essence.
There's some rather lengthy and detailed posts I did
here that might be of help to you regarding starting out.
Refer to my post no# 13, 14, 15. Yes, my post was thaaaat long!
A very helpful thread here on planetary nebulae that got made into a sticky.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=79684
Regarding digital setting circles...
I've found an article written by Denis (a fellow forum member), in the projects & articles menu.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-434-0-0-1-0.html
All the best Murphy & have fun and remember, very soon
IT WILL GET MUCH EASIER!
Suzy.
P.S I forgot to add an important thing when observing those faint fuzzies- averted vision! It's now been added above with a link.