Search for M101 with Celestron 10 inch.

I am very new at observation and last night I decided to go after M101.

It looked easy to find from what I could understand but after 3 hours I gave
up.

This object's magnitude is 7.9. Is this suppose to be easy to see with a
10inch scope?

MarcM

I am very new at observation and last night I decided to go after M101.

It looked easy to find from what I could understand but after 3 hours I
gave
up.

This object's magnitude is 7.9. Is this suppose to be easy to see with a
10inch scope?

Hi Marc,

The 7.9 is the total brightness. However M101 is so large, that 7.9 is
spread out over a large area --- similar to M33. It is probably closer to 14
mag for surface brightness.

More than anything else, you are going to need dark skies. When you look at
objects in the catalogs, also notice their size. If two objects have the
same total brightness, the smaller one will appear much brighter and easier
to locate. Save the big spreadout objects like 101 for nights you go to a
dark site.

Clear Skies

Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/
And the Lunar Picture of the Day http://www.lpod.org/
************************************

MarcM

"CLT" not@thisaddress wrote in message ...
I am very new at observation and last night I decided to go after M101.

It looked easy to find from what I could understand but after 3 hours I
gave up.

This object's magnitude is 7.9. Is this suppose to be easy to see with a
10inch scope?

Hi Marc,

The 7.9 is the total brightness. However M101 is so large, that 7.9 is
spread out over a large area --- similar to M33. It is probably closer to 14
mag for surface brightness.

More than anything else, you are going to need dark skies. When you look at
objects in the catalogs, also notice their size. If two objects have the
same total brightness, the smaller one will appear much brighter and easier
to locate. Save the big spreadout objects like 101 for nights you go to a
dark site.

Clear Skies

Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/
And the Lunar Picture of the Day http://www.lpod.org/
************************************

MarcM

Hi Marc,

I image from a fairly light polluted site – last night I could only
make out two stars in the little dipper, so my visual limiting
magnitude (VLM) to the north was only 2.1 . I could not see M101 in
my C-11 "push-to" eleven inch scope. I have seen it with my LX-90
(8-inch) goto scope under better conditions, but only because I knew
the faint blob must be a galaxy because my goto precision was with a
couple of arc minutes. The galaxies aren't called faint fuzzies for
nothing.

Here is an image I took of M101 – the CCD camera sees much more than
the eye!
http://home.att.net/~dpersyk/dso.htm

Clear skies,

Dennis Persyk
Igloo Observatory Home Page http://dpersyk.home.att.net
Hampshire, IL

New Images http://home.att.net/~dpersyk/new.htm