Struggling to find DSOs - any help gratefully received

[muttley]

I took my scope out to some dark countryside last night, to try to bag my first DSOs. It was perfectly clear for an hour or two, but I really struggled to locate the Great Globular Cluster (M13). I have TLAO and could easily make out all the star-hopping signposts (and the keystone), but I just couldn't find the blasted thing after 1/2 hr of looking. I am fairly sure that this should be one of the easiest things to find, and you can probably see it with the naked eye ...

I did find another grey blur in the general area, so it was doubly frustrating to see that and not know what it was! After that, I gave up on M13, but did manage to find the ring nebula straight away.

My finder scope is correctly aligned, just to rule that out, which probably just leaves a) stupidity just looking in the wrong place as the most likely culprits. I do find it hard to know what I am looking at through the finder scope though, as it is not always obvious to me if I am centering on the correct star. For example, if I try to line up on one of the stars in Cassiopeia, I really can't tell if I have the correct one in view, as you can only see one. Really I need to 'zoom out' so I can see all of them. I think my finderscope is 9x50 (supplied with the Skywatcher 200p). Is this a problem which goes away as you gain more experience, or is there a better way? I am reluctant to ditch the finder scope, as I feel that some things (the Pleiades for example) look better in the finder scope with the greater field of view. I have looked on FLO, and it seems that a Telrad would be much easier for locating the correct area - I would be interested to hear from anyone that uses these or red dot finders to hear the pros & cons.

Unless it is a really daft idea, I think I would like to add a Telrad or similar but keep the finder scope mounted too. Would this make sense?

Thanks for any help or advice.

BTW, I was so excited when I saw the ring nebula for the first time. I nearly phoned my wife at midnight to share this with her, but just managed to stop myself!

[Moonshane]

hi Muttley

don't worry, we all struggle at first. the one thing that enhanced my ability to put the scope where I wanted to point it was a red dot finder. I prefer Telrads on dobs but cheapers ones like Baader skysurfer 3 are good too. with this you'll be able to align the scope roughly and then easily see things in your finder to fine align. the object will then generally be in your eyepiece.

we all find our own ways of locating objects and you'll develop yours too in time.

the following are obvious in a 9x50 finder even in light polluted sites but you need to develop the 'instinct' for what DSOs look like.

look for irregular fuzz or patches of stars which do genuinely stand out in the optical finder.

M13

M92

M15

M31

M27

double cluster

beehive cluster

pleiades cluster

hopefully these 'showcase' objects will allow to to get the idea of what things look like in the finder and encourage you to stick with it.

[Velvet]

Hi as a newbie I use a telrad and a finder. I use the telrad first then go to the finder and then the EP. It makes sure I am looking at what I think I am! I struggled just with the finder, especially with very dark skies, it only served to confuse me.

As for DSO's I have had some success but they are not always easy. Someties I find I am looking straight through them.

I would advocate a telrad but someone with more knowledge may help you with finding DSO's

Velvet

[Bart]

As a newb it would be common (as I found) to glide past an object not knowing it was my target, especially when using low power magnification. Stop at anything that is not a true pinpoint of light, it may turn into something if you increase the magnification. Saying that, M13 should be easily visible if it was in your field of view, I would have said if you found M57, M13 should be a dawdle. When using your finder, dont forget everything is reversed, up is down and left/right. Using a straight through finder when looking through it is not intuitive, its counter intuitive in fact.

[crazyjedi]

I tend to use TLOA and Stellarium on my lap top (in night mode obviously) to help with my navigating. I find the frist and brightest guide star with my finder and then use my 24mm ES 68 degree EP for scanning to where the object should be and then cranking up the magnification to (hopefully) view the object.

I can usually find M13 quite easily and M31 too

I do share your frustration though as I have found the Dumbell nebula just once and was totally spellbound by it, only to never find it again

A have had difficulty finding M13 in the past - well not M13 as such but rather the whole of Hercules was hard to find. In the end my son and I sat back in our deck chairs and just relaxed and slowly scanned the sky and eventually Hercules appeared right where it was meant to be and M13 was there too

The first time I found the ring nebula I dragged my wife out to look at it - Taking my life in my own hands

[8kids]

You need to pan around slowly, when I first started I couldn't stop myself waving the scope around. I bought myself a red dot finder, this handy item gets me in the general area and then with my finderscope I am able to sweep around to the desired object.

It does get easier with practice. I tend to seek out a few of my faves (faves at the moment) as a warm up before I try to find anything new.

Having said all that of course I quite often fail miserably to find anything and realise the kids have been swinging from said red dot finder and finder scope

Gary.

[Qualia]

Muttley, I understand your frustration and I have found the following to be a helpful way to capture those DSOs.

i) Maps: Get yourself something like Star Atlas by Sky and Telescope. It's not that expensive, it's a piece of art in itself and it is extremely useful.

ii) Finderscope: You have a nice big finder, a 9x50, but maybe you ought to save for a right angled correct image one. This delivers to you stars right down to about magnitude 8, even if you're in a LP area, meaning you’ll be able to see every star plotted on the Sky Atlas and when you move amongst thoose stars, your left is left and your up is up. This kind of finderscope really does help.

iii) Telrad. These must surely be the business in dark areas. Position the bullseye, or the other two rings in the proper place against the stars and you’re more or less done. If you're out a little you can work out where you are by the three ringed cirlces giving you varying degrees of the sky you're looking at. You can make a plastic Telrad overlay for the Star Atlas or just print one of the free Telrad maps on the net. The only negative thing about the Telrad is that it can’t deliver more stars than your eyes alone can see so, if you're in an LP area, they really do speed up your finding, really do help to judge where you are, but it must be used in conjunction with the findercope.

iv) EP: A low magnification EP ought to be your workhorse. If you've got the dosh, make it a wide field one. A low mag EP around 30x (or less) is great. It'll offer sufficient sky to manage along with your star map and it will hopefully pick out or hint at what you're hunting.

v) Sketches: This is too often overlooked but make sure you're aware of what you're looking for. NASA photos or those images produced here are not going to help you. You need to check out the sketches. These are generally produced by patient observers who are trying their best to get the EP image just-right, so the little drawings should give you a very good idea of what the DSO being hunted out will more or less look like.

vi) Turn Left at Orion: you already have this, so enough said.

vii) Patience: if you don't succeed one night, no worries, you've probably already discovered something new about yourself, your equipment, the sky, and those stars and DSOs will be back to give you another chance tomorrow.

Good luck, and clear skies

[Tinker1947]

A Telrad and the free maps, plus Stellarium, if you can a DSLR to snap a image so you can check what you think your looking at is in fact it and not a close by DSO, all the Messiers in my list came from using a Telrad and loads of patience, it gets easier with practice.....

[glowjet]

A lot of very helpful suggestions already, I would support the use of a correct image finder, whether RACI or straight through, an RDF of the Telrad patten, or a quality single dot unit like the Williams Optics product. A 1 mW - 5 mW Green laser pen in a proper mounting on your scope is another device worth considering, if it brings results. Finally although TL@O is considered the base from which to start, The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders is a much more in-depth publication, with advice on how to get there with finder diagrams, together with details and photos of what you can expect to see, covering most of the popular targets in the 88 constellations. Paperback of some 500 pages or so, quite a modest outlay and comes highly recommended

John.

[swamp thing]

One thing to remember when looking through the finder is: if you are pointing it at a bright star, the brightest star in the finders field of view will be that one, there maybe many other stars in the FOV, but the brightest one will still be the bright one you eyed up on. It may not be in the centre but it is that star.

Tracing out the brighter constellations through the finder is great practice. I recommend the dipper bowl of Ursa Major. Trace the outline stars a few times to get your eye in. Then Cassiopeia, trickier because of the shape, once you've managed that a few times, you're ready to start "star hopping" proper.

[Northern Soul man]

Hi Muttley - stick at it mate. Not sure if you have a pair of bino's to hand - these are a littler better than the finder - but as mentioned before a RACI (Right Angled Correct Image) finder and a good set of star charts/maps - I was using the RACI with a set of Sky Atlas 2000 charts with my last scopes - not sure how much light pollution you have but from here in the Midlands, the skies are awful - had a red dot finder on my little Mak - really poor light polluted skies are not the best when using a red dot finder because only the brightest stars in each constellation are visible so your just guessing the location at best.

The RACI finder will show you exactly whats on the maps/charts and you can always check with a pair of bino's that your in the right place - I've been observing for years from the light polluted skies of the Midlands and still struggle with the fainter objects, even with GOTO now some objects are just invisible due to the brightness of the background sky - at best the galaxies and DSO's are just smudges of grey "cloud - like" objects with no structure due to the light pollution.

Keep at it Muttley - we all get dis - heartened, but remember each night you go out, is a night spent observing and for years I still keep going back to the same targets night after night - dont worry you'll remember the 10 objects you will find against the one object (that due to the light pollution) you missed and remember theres always the next clear night to be thinking about. Cheers Paul.

[jason.p]

I ony recently found my first DSO, the Ring. I was searching for three nights getting familiar with the markers Vega and Lyra until I finally dropped on it. I know what you mean about not recognising what you see in the finder when you go to the eyepiece, apart from being upside down and back to front things just don't look the same! I've found making a simple map based on the Telrad charts helps, then finding the markers with the bins. I'm sure it's all down to practice, patience, persistence and confidence. I've got several targets planned but the weather Gods are not co-operating!

I will certainly be getting a Telrad and RACI finder one day, but in the meantime I'll do it the hard way. It's a good way to learn the sky, and when you do find your target It's so good!

(I'm by no stretch of the imagination an expert but I recognised some of the frustrations you expressed)

Jason

[muttley]

Thanks very much for all the helpful advice and encouragement. I will invest in a telrad, and a good chart or one offthe books mentioned, then report back. I really appreciate the feedback.

The one piece of advice I can offer other beginners would be to take the trouble to drive out to a nearby dark site, if at all possible. I live in a little village, surrounded by countryside, and assumed I would have dark enough skies. Having struggled to find any DSOs from my garden (other than M42 in the winter) I drove 5 minutes out into the country and found a decent hill. I still couldn't find everything (hence my question today) but the difference was amazing and I could see a sky absolutely full of stars, not just the major constellations. I am enthused again, and will certainly stick with it.

[Paulb3098]

Hi Muttley,

I started with a 150PL, best thing I did was to fit a telrad. I found the following messier maps via the web, makes life a lot easier.

http://www.astro-tom...essier_maps.htm

Good luck

[Astro Imp]

You have a lot of good advice in the posts to date but one thing I notice that hasn't been mentioned is to keep both eyes open when using your finder. The way I do it is look at the star I want to to start at, then keeping one eye on this star look through the finder and move the scope until the two images coincide. This applies to both a straight through finder and a Telrad if/when you get one.

HTH and good luck.

[WaveSoarer]

You've had a lot of great advice now but to give my tu'pence worth... I have much the same set up and I've found that if, I get a bit stuck, I sight along the tube of the main scope (using the hinges, or gaps, in the mounting rings as a reference) to get the alignment roughly right. I then go to the finder and start to do a finer alignment: either by moving the whole scope by hand or locking the clutches and using the fine adjustment knobs. I generally only use the latter once I'm close. You need to be sure that the scope is reasonably balanced as it'll move while you fumble around for the locking knobs. I also find that keeping both eyes open when using the finder can also help. I also find that just using the finder hand held is a good way of learning the patch of sky where the DSO is located. This will also help you get used to the field of view of the finder and how much of the sky you'll expect to see through it. This is especially useful when you're comparing what you see through the finder with Stellarium. I actually found M13 using the finder, hand held, a couple of nights before I brought out the whole setup to have a better viewing. I found it very obvious through the finder and I can find it very easily now. If you aim the finder at the top right star in the key stone and then slide gradually down in the direction of the star on the bottom right, you'll find M13 about a third of the way down or there abouts. It's quite close to a pair of faint stars so that M13 forms the apex of a small equilateral triangle. Once you've found it for the first time, it's pretty much unmissable thereafter.

Dave