star hop

[La_Displuke (Luke)]

Hey everyone i need help working on my star hopping.
Can anyone give me some nice easy objects to practice the art of the star hop?
Everything i find this far has been with kind of pointing and just knowing generally where it is I'm looking for.

[raymo]

An easy starter would be the beautiful NGC 5139 [ Omega Centauri],
one of the two best globular clusters.
If you are familiar with the two pointers to The Southern Cross,
[Alpha and Beta Centauri], from the upper one [Beta], go left at about
10pm on a clock face to an obvious brightish star a bit further from Beta
than the distance between the two pointers, and then continue on for
roughly the same distance again, when you should see an obvious fuzz
ball,[ your target]. A bit harder, and much fainter, if you continue on about half the distance you came from the previous star, and go down a little, with a darkish sky you should come across NGC 5128 [Centaurus A ]. How easy you find it to locate will depend on the aperture of
your scope.
Happy hunting.
raymo

[MichaelSW (Michael)]

Luke.

G'day.

The Brisbane City Council library has a number of copies of the book,“Star Watch: The Amateur Astronomer's Guide to Finding, Observing, and Learning about Over 125 Celestial Objects” by Philip S Harrington.

This is a wonderful book to get you into learning to star-hop. The stars and objects of each season are presented in 6 or 7 charts with clear instructions on how to hop your way to the target object.

Here is a link to the book on Philip Harrington’s website. You can see examples of the information in each chapter and the Sky-Charts at http://www.philharrington.net/swtch.htm

The BCC eLibrary catalogue link is at https://elibcat.library.brisbane.qld.../261730107/123

I have always found the best deal on this book to be at The Book Depository. http://www.bookdepository.com/Star-W.../9780471418047 Currently AUD $25.22 with free delivery.

Once you realize that YOU CAN find objects – well the sky is the limit.

Cheers.