Quick "How to find interesting things" in Aladin (step pics)

[NickK]

Aladin - a viewer into the Strasbourg university catalogues.

I'm using the aladin viewer application available here:

The Aladin Sky Atlas

It requires a net connection to operate (it pulls data from the university servers) but gives you a massive amount of information at your finger tips.

However there's an easy option to find a selection of interesting objects that don't need Hubble using the Outreach program's "Watch" tab that's squirrelled away (and the interestingly titled S-Extractor tab!).

Using this it's possible to select all the elliptical galaxies or planetary nebula for example, then overlay them on the All Sky Optical Survey..

Here is a set of images (labeled 1 to 6 in sequence) with instructions on each..

[NickK]

Just to show you what Aladin can do.

Here's M42.. the AllSky Infrared with the AllSky Optical overlaid as a translucent layer with Simbad layered translucently over the top of that.

Now it's also possible to set up a filter of the Simbad data to select, say, only those objects that are magnitude 13 or lower but that's another thread..