What To Look For In The Sky

[christoria]

Hello,

I am kind of frustrated by the telescope I've borrowed this past week. I can't seem to find anything...except the Moon and Jupiter. Is there a technique or something I'm missing? I can find many constellations, specific bright stars and I know N S W & E. But these nebulas and galaxies are lost to me. The scope is an 8 in. reflector with eyepieces 25mm, 9mm and 3.7mm with a 2x magnifier I can attach to any eyepiece.

What should I be looking for with this equipment, what should I see and how clearly should I see it? Because all I really see is more stars, and an occasional sattelite. Location = NE USA

Thank you for your time reading this,

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I suspect the bit of equipment you're missing is a camera .

The moon, Jupiter, Venus, and most of the other planets are obvious easy targets (it's fun to find the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and watch them move every night). Star clusters such as the Pleiades or the Beehive are quite fun to track down too. Multiple stars can also be quite interesting (Albeiro is quite a pretty one - a blue and a yellow star at one end of Cygnus). But most nebulae and galaxies just look like vague, fuzzy blobs when viewed through a telescope - ideally you'd need a camera hooked up to the telescope that can take long-exposure images to see those nicely.

Finding things can be a bit of a challenge with a telescope, since the field of view is quite small. I frequently got lost in the sky whenever I used my old crappy 2 inch refractor - particularly since looking through the scope revealed more stars than I could see which made me lose my bearings even more!

All I can say is "be patient". Use Celestia in planetarium mode to get an idea of where things are in the sky from your position on Earth too, that helps enormously when you're planning what you're seeing.

[christoria]

I think you're right about the camera, however, I don't think I've found any galaxies or nebulas yet to photograph. I don't think I'd know it if I saw it. However, the planets that are out I can find pretty easily.

Question: How do you use "Planetarium Mode" in Celestia? That sounds awesome.

[selden]

Christoria,

It sounds like you should get one of the introductory amateur astronomy books. They explain how to find objects in the sky by following stars that are relatively easy to find.

For planetarium mode, please read the "Preliminary User's FAQ", which is a "sticky" near the top of the User's Forum. In particular, see Q&A#19

[ANDREA]

I think you're right about the camera, however, I don't think I've found any galaxies or nebulas yet to photograph. I don't think I'd know it if I saw it. However, the planets that are out I can find pretty easily. Question: How do you use "Planetarium Mode" in Celestia? That sounds awesome.

Christoria, I think you need something different from Celestia "Planetarium mode".
Try this, it's very nice and, like Celestia, freeware!

http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html

Its name is "Cartes du Ciel", in many different languages obviously including English.
Enjoy!

Andrea

[Harry]

In case you want to stick with Celestia and planetarium mode, you may find my Azimuth/Elevation script useful.
Forum thread: http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4964
Download: http://www.h-schmidt.net/celestia/show-azimuth-elevation_v1.2.celx

Pressing shift-F will force the horizon to stay horizontal, so you don't need Celestia's Azimuth mode - good when using the mouse, but OTOH the cursor keys stop working due to some problems with scripting & keyboard input.

Harald

[christoria]

selden: Got a book. I love libraries for that reson.

ANDREA: I have that program - forgot about it. Excellent prog.

Harry: Thank you. Will try it soon.

So, I got planetarium mode, and still have to try the script. I actually found M57. That thing whizzed by in about 4 seconds at 2x with the 3.7mm. All manual searching here. I also found a couple of clusters - unsure which ones as of yet. And of course, the Milky Way. Fun is happening, but slowly.

[christoria]

hahaha,

I spellded "reason" rongly.

[tony873004]

8 inches is a good telescope. What brandof telescope do you have? (Meade, Celestron, etc.) And what type of model, (dob, s-c, etc.) and is it computer controlled?

Don't forget the Andromeda galaxy. It's an easy find for an 8-inch scope. Under a dark sky, it's a naked-eye object.

There are still 2 comets in the sky although they're fading fast. Get Astronomy magazine, and Sky and Telescope magazine, or visit their web pages to find them.

Uranus and Neptune are high in the sky this month. I've never resolved either as a disk, but my telescope is only 3.5 inches.

Asteroids are fun because they move against the background stars in just a few hours.

Double stars are fun too. If you're planning on having this hobby for the rest of your life, find as many as you can, and sketch their positions relative to the background stars, and relative to each other. If you repeat this in 10 - 50 years, you'll have a few surpirses. They actually move!

The Orion Nebula is impressive. Wrong time of year, though.

Jupiter is sinking fast into the sunset, and won't come around again for a few months, until it makes its apparation as a morning star. When looking at Jupiter, it's important to stare at it for several minutes. Lots of detail will pop out at you that wasn't there in the first few seconds of observing.

Saturn will emerge from the solar glare as a morning sky in a few months. See how many moons you can count. Titan is easy.

Venus should be very impressive in the morning sky. It's a huge crescent. See if you can spot the elusive Ashen Light on its dark side.

There's another galaxy that I know I saw in my 3.5 inch Celestron. I got it from the computerized hand controller, but I forget its name. Most of the stuff in the computerized hand controller's menu is out of the range of my telescope, but under a good dark sky, you should be able to see lots.