Help!

[George!]

Out with my neighbours telescope D130mm F1000mm and I'm gazing at the stars with a 20mm 10mm and all I can see is stars where are the nebula and clusters I have. a 2x barlow but nothing is changing I'm looking where they are supposed to be and it really is quite updating as I'm getting a 200p Dob!

[great_bear]

If you live in a light polluted area, nebs are pretty much non-existent and the clusters can be hard to find.

Start by looking at two classics: M13 and M57

Even in light-polluted skies these two are normally visible.

[George!]

Even when I look for clusters all I see is stars just more stars

[Bukko]

Hi, George!,

Great_Bear is right, Light Polution will mess with your views.

The good news is your 200mm tube will gathe rmore light, so a light polution filter will still leave more available light for you.

This will not compensate for a good, dark sky, but will help.

Also, another problem is you are trying too hard with the EP's.

Stick to the 20mm, 30mm+ would be better. Yes, the targets would be smaller, but probably more visible.

Good luck,

Gordon.

[Nova]

it takes practise. took me ages to find my first cluster. dont be too disheartend. when you do eventually find one its a great sense of achievement. It could be as mentioned to bright where you are. you could try star hopping using a chart and matching up what you can see through scope to whats on the chart. That way you know where you are and where you have to go. Again it takes practise im still trying to get the hamg of it now and seem to get lost more often than not. Stick with it!!!

[George!]

I just can't manage to get closer it's just like seeing loads of dots but brighter none if the hundreds I observed seemed to be any shape or even bigger than 1/2 a mm

[John]

Are you trying to line the scope up on a particular object or just panning around the sky hoping to come across something ?. The chances of coming across something are quite slim - theres a lot of sky !.

Put the lowest power eyepiece in the scope to find things then add more magnification if it seems needed. Low / medium power is fine for many deep sky objects. Use a star chart to see where a particular object is in the sky then use the finder to get the scope pointing at that part of the sky - with a bit of luck, by panning around very slowly with the scope / low power eyepiece the object you are looking for will appear in the eyepiece.

Stars will never appear as anything but points of light, no matter how much you magnify them.

PS: It obviously is important that the finder and main scope are aligned, ie: both point in exactly the same direction. This is best done in daylight using a distant (ie: a mile or more) object like a tree, chimney, church spire etc.

[Ant]

Looking at clusters through a scope... it is more stars that you want - that's (generally) all a cluster is.

With Deep Sky Objects you want the lowest power you can get, you'll almost certainly have a 25mm, 10mm and the 2x barlow. Try using just the 25mm when looking for them.

Cheers

Ant

[hemihaggis]

try and find m 13 , it will take ages lol but its worth it

[JamesF]

I agree with the others who've suggested you stick with the 25mm ep initially. It's far easier to home in on something when you can see more sky, then get tighter in on it afterwards.

Unless you're very lucky (a few times I've estimated where something should be from Stellarium, put the RDF at about the right place in the sky and found the object bang in the middle of the eyepiece), it's a fair bit of work to get the hang of star-hopping and you'll need to practice. And even then, until you learn to recognise what you're looking for you could easily be staring straight at it and not realise.

M13 is a good target to try for (as is M31) because there'll be no doubt once you see it. It can still take ages to find by hand the first time though. Once you've got familiar with it you hardly even need to try.

James

[Skiddins]

Admittedly I use a 'Goto', but M57 is almost always clearly visible to me and I live between Heathrow and Slough