What to look for????

[mike_g]

Hi i am a beginner, and have just bought a skywatcher 130p with goto mount. other than planets what would be good to look at???

[Bumfluff]

Hi, my first DSO's viewed were m13, m57 and m27. Double stars are also good Polaris, alberio and epsilon lyrae near Vega. Happy hunting

[Stu]

M45 is visible now if you are up, well worth a look and will rise earlier as we head towards winter.

As said, the globular clusters M13 and M92 in Hercules are a good place to start. M15 is also well placed currently. M57 in Lyra can be tricky to find but is reasonably bright, use higher magnification once you are in the right place.

Got to give the Andromeda galaxy M31 a go too, quite easy to find and relatively bright.

Download Stellarium onto your pc it is a free planetarium programme and will help you find all these objects.

Good luck

Stu

[swamp thing]

As Stu suggested download and have a good look at Stellarium, it will show you a great deal of targets for your scope.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Don't forget the milky way itself. Just point your scope at it anywhere and enjoy the views.

[paul schofield]

Anything except the sun. Its hard to pick out individual things to look for, planets Jupiter and Venus are great early morning targets at the moment. As are M42 Orion Nebula, M45 The Pleiades. A good book you may be interested in Turn Left At Orion, it contains some of the best targets to look for throughout the year, may be a help to you. Good luck.

[DarkerSky]

For easy navigation get familiar with the Summer Triangle of stars and start searching out objects within that triangle. M57 the Ring nebula in Lyra is a good one to start with as its relatively easy to find between Beta and Gamma Lyrae. The globular cluster M56 is close by too, as is the famous double-double star, Epsilon Lyrae, which you might jsut be able to split with a 130p using a high power eyepiece. A double star you'll def be able to split and that will look awesome in your scope is Beta Cygni (Albireo). The Rocking Horse open cluster near Sadr (NGC 6910) could also look great with a high power eyepiece. Further down in the triangle seek out M27 Dumbbell nebula and M71 globular cluster in Sagitta. To find them all either get stellarium on a portable device so you can compare your view of the sky to what you're looking for, or buy a good star atlas.