Tough time with galaxies

[willcastle]

I finally ! managed to spot andromeda last night!! My first galaxy!! It was incredible! And felt very satisfying to find... But it was quite hard to focus on. Fortunately I found it through my finderscope. Otherwise I doubt I would have found it at all!! I was in fact, very suprised it showed up at all in the finderscope. I haven't been so lucky with my second target m51!! but the challenge is fun all the same... It's thoroughly annoying that I've had about 7 cloudy nights in a row though!! And the weather doesn't look Like it will improve any time soon...

[Bart]

Its tough going at the moment finding/observing galaxies with the nights not being truely dark and a moon around. Andromeda will look even better as the years goes on. You'll have better luck as the nights get darker and there's a knack to finding the faint ones but you'll get better as your observing skills improve.

Clear skies.

Bart

[kniclander]

M51 is much much fainter than M31 and won't show up in your finder. under dark skies it is easy to find and to see but if your skies are not really dark it's tricky.

[northernnutter]

Congratulations on your first galaxy! It's exciting isn't it?

M51 'is' tricky. I found it a few months back, for the first time...but haven't found it since!

I feel your frustration with the weather too! But darker nights are on the way, thankfully!

Clear skies.

Vicky.

[acey]

I finally ! managed to spot andromeda last night!! My first galaxy!! It was incredible! And felt very satisfying to find... But it was quite hard to focus on...

It's always going to have a fuzzy appearance and that can make focusing harder to judge. Try looking at field stars and focus on them, it'll help you get the galaxy in best focus.

Congrats on finding it!

[26Left]

Well done and keep with it. M31 was the first galaxy I tried to find when I started out in Autumn 2009. I was outside for hours and never found it. With experience (and I still have loads to learn), I promise it gets easier. You'll hop around the sky using different signposts. For me, the Andromeda Galaxy is "through the square and second on the right"

One thing that helps me is to use binoculars, because M31 is so big.

[brantuk]

Come Autumn on a clear and dark night, M31 is easily picked out with the naked eye so long as you know where to look.

Take a diagonal line through the Great Square of Pegasus (bottom right to top left) and another straight line down from the "pointy bit" of the "W" in Cassiopiea - and just about where they cross you'll see the Andromeda galaxy - with binocs there's no mistaking the big fuzzy patch

[Luke]

Congrats on your first galaxy!

If you haven't tried it yet try using averted vision, where you look slightly to the side of the galaxy instead of straight at it once you've got it in the eyepiece.

Edit: could be M31 is so big in the eyepiece you don't need to use averted vision! I find it helps on the small, faint galaxies though!

[SteveA]

There's no denying it...every new object you see generates a real sense of achievment...and there are are a lot of them out there....congratulations ....

Steve

[WayBig]

Congratulations on your first galaxy, it's a real sense of achievement when you manage to track one down isn't it?

[willcastle]

Yer it's very exciting! I did notice andromeda looked clearer when looking slightly to the side of it! It was very clear in the finderscope though! Literally couldn't miss it! Can't wait to get out there and hunt for more!

[mdstuart]

Well done on catching M31. It is not what you expect the first time you see a galaxy. Almost like a faint grey mist with no definable edge..

This is not really galaxy season but many more will come around in the autumn.

If you can try M81 & M82 which are also pretty bright and seeing a pair of galaxies is another WOW moment..These should just be visible in your finder if you have reasonable skies.

Good luck

Mark

[Meademan]

When I first started observing, I found galaxies incredibly difficult to spot, even with a go-to mount. Now, I'm used to what I'm looking for and they just seem to pop out everywhere! But dark skies and clear nights are the key to seeing them.

[Doc]

If you saw M31 you would have spotted M32 and maybe M110 without knowing, so thats three galaxies you might have seen.

[SimonfromSussex]

Im lucky with dark skies and almost no light pollution but some nights here m51 is little more than a faint whisp so can be really hard to find. It depends a lot on atmospherics. Some nights look clear to the naked eye but under magnification everything is washed out. The pro on bbc sky at night said it took him half an hour to find m51 on the last program i saw! If we get a good night though i can just make it out in finder scope and it is then very clear in a 25 eyepiece. I have only been at it for a few months but u learn what to look for with practice. Because it can he hard to find i think it makes it all the more beautiful when u do get it!

[Sam]

Galaxies are hard to spot but well done on getting a good view of M31 and as already mentioned you could have already seen M110 and M32 in the process as well. Galaxies are a bit tricky because the light is smeared out over a smudge as it appears in the field of view, this means that though their overall brightness may be listed as a magnitude of 8 or 9 it means they can still be very hard to spot. M33 is a good example - it's sometimes easier to spot in a pair of binos rather than in the telescope. Often when looking for galaxies it's all about trying to see very subtle differences in the background using techniques like averted vision. Seldom do galaxies just pop out of the eyepiece (other than M51), some take a lot of effort to find. M74 took me about 1/2 hour to find and then only very very subtle details were visible.

It takes a lot of practice to get your eye used to looking for galaxies but once you've bagged a few very faint ones you'll be seeing loads of them. M81 and M82 are a great pair to have a look for in the northern sky as they are quite bright. M33 can be a challenge so look for a big slightly brightish patch near triangulum (to the right and up a bit), if it's clear and dark enough you might be able to see some of the spiral structure - but you have to give it time, it's best to start in the centre of the galaxy and slowly work you way out, trying to pick up the subtle variations in the background brightness that indicate the boundaries of dust lanes etc.

A lot of galaxies will just appear as faint smudges, looking directly at them will often make them disappear so sometimes to see some of the more difficult targets you have to look to the left or right of the main target using averted vision. In addition you can wobble the FOV a bit as the human eye is best at picking up moving objects - so making the FOV wobble gives the impression of movement.

Good luck on seeing a few more!

[todd8137]

never seen m51 from the garden yet at my dark site its no probs but the back garden is a killer

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Congratulations on your first galaxy!As others have said, galaxies like dark skies. Under good conditions, M51 shows up in 50mm finders, and even in my old 6x30. In my new 16x70 finder it is easy. However, under bad conditions it is very difficult.

Try NGC 7331 in Pegasus, that is better placed at the moment and a very nice object.

[JimStan]

M31 almost is easier to see with a finder than it is with the main scope, unless you are using a real wide low-power eyepiece!

My son has a home-made 6 inch F3.3 richest-field scope that is terrible for high magnification viewing, but can spot various nebula and even some galaxies ( such as M31 ) as easy as anything I have seen that isn't attached to a "goto" mount !

[swamp thing]

My son has a home-made 6 inch F3.3 richest-field scope that is terrible for high magnification viewing, but can spot various nebula and even some galaxies ( such as M31 ) as easy as anything I have seen that isn't attached to a "goto" mount !

That sounds like an ace scope I would love something similar to use alongside my Dob at really dark skies, for those giant faint objects that only RFT or bins show well.

Regards Steve