m 81 / 82

[hemihaggis]

hi folks just had my first observing session in a month cut short , think the fuse in the powertank cable has went ? .. anyway i had a great view of m 81/82 .. could see the stretched out cigar shape , in one and the spiral shape in the other , looked great tonight in the pitch black sky .. even managed both in the one fov using a 26mm ep . also had a look at m31 , very bright tonight , the core was very prominent , jupiter and three moons also .

anyway now to try and fix the scope lol

[Lorne]

Never managed to find 81/82 with my scope yet, hoping to cross them off soon mind you.

[rory]

my son and me found the m81/82 galaxies tonight for the first time . no detail at all though. a mixture of 90mm apeture,onlyx31 mag and town polluted sky. just left us with one small round smudge and one elongated smudge,very small too. BUT a find is a find.

[Chris H]

Using my 10" Dob and an Ethos 8mm the pair just fit in the FOV. At x150 when viewed in the nice dark skies over the Irish sea they look superb, especially when seeing was as good as it was last night.

[ecosse]

I have looked for m81 and m82 a couple of times now but I don't think the skies are dark enough here. Hopefully when I go to a dark sky site I will be successful.

[Stu]

They can be slippery customers ecosse, I agree. However they should be well within grasp for you. I spotted them with a 4" apo under not brilliant skies recently.

If you try to identify some star patterns in the area then you should be able to star hop to them from the brighter ursa major stars.

Stu

[estwing]

i bagged these two from my back garden tonight with my 63mm not great detail obviously but that's 5 Messier's with it so far, still struggling to bag M33 tho:o

[Lorne]

Finally got them last night along with a few other M's around Ursa Major. M Count slowly increasing

[rory]

i bagged these two from my back garden tonight with my 63mm not great detail obviously but that's 5 Messier's with it so far, still struggling to bag M33 tho:o

i can only desribe m33 from my town location with only 90mm appeture. all i get is a very faint core. grey smear not disimlar to the crab nebula . i can only see it at all with perifial vision and abit of scope tapping.

i was told dark locations really make m33 a nice object to see .

[Double Kick Drum]

hi folks just had my first observing session in a month cut short , think the fuse in the powertank cable has went ? .. anyway i had a great view of m 81/82 .. could see the stretched out cigar shape , in one and the spiral shape in the other , looked great tonight in the pitch black sky .. even managed both in the one fov using a 26mm ep . also had a look at m31 , very bright tonight , the core was very prominent , jupiter and three moons also .

anyway now to try and fix the scope lol

Keep an eye out for the third galaxy in that group - NGC 3077. It is just better than mag. 10 with a moderately high surface brightness. It is to the East of M81, almost at right angles compared to M82 and only slightly further away.

I can get it with a 5" in semi-rural skies.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

NGC 3077 is nice, I got it years back with my home made 6" F/8.

M33 can be spectacular from a really dark site. It requires a wide-field instrument, such as a pair of binoculars or a short, fast refractor at low magnification. My best views were from France with my 15x70 and 80mm F/6 with 22mm Nagler (22x and 3.76 deg FOV). Spiral structure was very clear.

[Nexus 6]

Keep an eye out for the third galaxy in that group - NGC 3077.

have not seen this yet, will have to check it out, thanks for the tip It has no image on Stellarium but did look nice when I Googled it.