Goals for a new observer

G.T. wrote:

Excellent. We'll start with M8, M20, M13, M31, and M27. M24 and M17 aren't
showing on S and T's default web sky chart so I assume they may be harder
see?

No, not at all -- they're among the most prominent things in the sky.
I suspect that the main reason they're not on our chart is that that
area of the sky is so chock-full of showpiece objects that there's
no room to label them all.

Actually, I'm not sure what M20 is doing there. It's an exceptionally
lovely object when seen under dark skies, but it is *not* one of the
dozen easiest deep-sky objects in and around Sagittarius.

- Tony Flanders
(Associate Editor, Sky & Telescope)

wrote:
G.T. wrote:


Excellent. We'll start with M8, M20, M13, M31, and M27. M24 and M17 aren't
showing on S and T's default web sky chart so I assume they may be harder
see?


No, not at all -- they're among the most prominent things in the sky.
I suspect that the main reason they're not on our chart is that that
area of the sky is so chock-full of showpiece objects that there's
no room to label them all.

Actually, I'm not sure what M20 is doing there. It's an exceptionally
lovely object when seen under dark skies, but it is *not* one of the
dozen easiest deep-sky objects in and around Sagittarius.

I do observe from fairly dark skies so that influences what I perceive
as easy to find, but I've run into M20 after looking at the Lagoon on a
couple of occasions just by moving the scope around to see what I can
see. "Ooh, what's that?" checks chart "The Trifed Nebula, cool!".
One thing I don't think anyone mentioned, is starting at say the Lagoon
and just slowly scanning up along the Milky Way with your low power
eyepiece (25mm). You can run into all sorts of nice views.


Shawn

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 08:43:12 -0500, "Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D."
wrote:

I wondered if the 3D glasses used on some workstations could be used to
turn off at 120 Hz, and eliminate lots of the man-made light. I don't
have any idea what to Google for.

Since large-scale power distribution is three-phase, I think you'd be
spending too much time off to block the majority of the man-made
light.

Good luck mate..... I'm off to a nice dark sky in Australia in 10 days
with my new 8" dob..... fingers crossed for clear skies!
I was in a VERY remote area of northern Australia over the past few
weeks (12 degrees South latitude), pitch black skies.... couldn't take
a scope though, so packed binos..... then it was cloudy 80%+ of the
time!
I was up early one morning, had a nice glimpse of Orion, then figured
since I was so far north compared to usual (32 deg S) I look for the
andromeda galaxy.... pulled out a magazine...... worked out where to
look...... couldn't find it.....
after it was light I worked out it was a British magazine so the view
for me would be inverted! D'Oh!!! was totally cloudy after that! next
time.....


In article , G.T.
wrote:

"Jax" wrote in message
...
G.T. wrote:
Ok, this weekend we'll be me and my GF's first astrocamping trip. I've
got
a couple of mountain top campsites picked out, about 7000 ft, with a
pretty
good view in all directions depending on which one we choose. This is
in
southern California.

We have a 6", 750mm reflector with a handful of eyepieces ranging from
5mm
to 25mm. We've looked at the moon but that's it so far because the
seeing
conditions from our small patio here in Burbank have been horrible for
the
past month. Due to the arrangement of trees and our building we have a
very
small view of the sky.

So, now that we'll be in an area with good seeing what objects beyond
the
moon, Jupiter, and Venus (and possibly Saturn in the morning) should we
set
as a simple goal for finding and seeing?

I've printed out a sky chart from Sky and Telescope, and will try to
pick up
a mag or two today or tomorrow but I haven't yet had a chance to check
magnitudes of DSOs.

Thanks,
Greg


Without knowing your skill level in locating objects, what you may want
to do is just look for faint fuzzy objects in the sky and point your
scope toward them. There should be plenty to keep you busy on your
first trip to a dark site. Do you have a star chart program like the
free Cartes du Ciel? A basic star atlas like Bright Star Atlas?


Thanks. Our skills are pretty minimal at the moment. We'll definitely be
looking for faint fuzzies and then pointing the scope towards them but I
also want to start saying, "hey, I want to look at Andromeda" and then try
to go find it.

Thanks for the chart and atlas suggestions, I'm going to try to pick as much
info up as possible tomorrow.

Greg



--
cheers mate
p l a s m o d i u m @ i i n e t . n e t . a u

"...... four years of premed, four years of med school and tons of unpaid
loans had made me realise one thing - I don't know jack!"