M1?

[assasincz]

Is it better to use low or high magnification? M57 responds to high mag, and can be harder to spot with lower magnification. I suspect M1 may be the other way around?

From my experience, magnification around 80-90x is quite good, makes the object still stufficiently bright and yet, makes the shape apparent.

[Moonshane]

I have seen M1 with many instruments from 15x70 bins to my 16" dob. I live in a reasonably light polluted area but at low powers when the sky is dark (i.e. no moon or thin cloud etc) it's relatively straight forward to find.

what you see really depends on the quality of sky, the magnification and the aperture.

with my 15x70s it's easy with averted vision

with my 6" scope it's also easy with direct vision and better with averted with my widest eyepiece in particular (x23 -50)

with my 16" scope on good nights I can see a few hints of brighter structure within the fuzz and at a dark site (PSP2011 in Buxton) I clearly saw the main bright knots within the 'core' with direct vision at 70x).

it's certainly within the capability of your 130mm newt. I find moving the scope slightly back and forth, creates averted vision and sometimes helps pick up faint objects. a dark T shirt over the head might help too.

[nytecam]

It is tricky to find - immediately above bright zeta Tau [lower Bull's horn] are two faint stars forming a triangle with zeta - follow a line through these two faint stars westward

for 2/3rd their separation and slightly downwards for M1 - good luck

If you have an equatorial mount then center M42 Orion Neb using low power EP then release Dec lock and sweep scope vertically upwards - M1 and M42 have virtually the same RA

My M1 pic via little ETX-70 e-finder from last week below:rolleyes:

[bish]

I've just managed it with my 150p under really bad light pollution.

[Rob_UK_SE]

I have seen on a few occasions in the CPC925. Always using low magnification around 70-80x. However, I find I fairly quickly end up drifting back towards M42, M37 and M35.

I might get lynched for saying this, but I don't think M1 is one of the more interesting objects for visual observers, in my opinion. It is a very very faint fuzzy in the absolute sense of the word. However, for astrophotography it must be wonderful to study it.

Averted vision is really useful when looking for / at the Crab Nebula.

Rob

[JamesF]

Definitely possible under the right conditions with an ST80. It was one of the first DSOs I found when I got mine. The low contrast makes it tricky to be sure you're really seeing it rather than just a trick of the optics though.

James

[Paulb3098]

It all depends on how bad the light pollution is, our town has just started to put in the new LED lights and I saw the M1 for the first time last night after 2 1/2 years, also bagged Hubble Variable (averted). Just goes to show how much street lights affect the viewing.

[patomlin76]

It is tricky to find - immediately above bright zeta Tau [lower Bull's horn] are two faint stars forming a triangle with zeta - follow a line through these two faint stars westward

for 2/3rd their separation and slightly downwards for M1 - good luck

If you have an equatorial mount then center M42 Orion Neb using low power EP then release Dec lock and sweep scope vertically upwards - M1 and M42 have virtually the same RA

My M1 pic via little ETX-70 e-finder from last week below:rolleyes:

Fantastic tip, thanks!

Next clear night it's my No. 1 priority!