orion neb

[vexinstar]

so last night, the skies stayed clear enough till orion came up above the horizon, i managed to get a sight of the nebula in the sword for the first time, and it was amazing. i was wondering would i see more detail if i used color filters? this is the first nebula i have managed to find, due to its easy to find. it was rather bright in my SW 130. i have been looking to find m31 for a while, now i have somthing to compare agaist (kind of) i was wondering if m31 was brighter and or bigger than than m42. have been using my BST explorer 18mm. i have a couple of maps. to show where m31 is, it has just eluded me.

may sound like stupid questions, just wondering why i havent been able to find it. i have relatively dark skies, living in a suburb of manchester.

[swamp thing]

Hi

Congrats on M42 it's a beautiful object huh? M31 is huge, much bigger than M42 but, most only ever see the core area in the centre of it. We need to get to dark skies to see the full extent of this massive object.

From suburbs of a major city you are gonna struggle to see any more than the central core. The core is bright and easily seen even from badly LP observing locations. The spiral arms are quickly lost in any sort of LP, so don't expect to see anything like the images. For this you need very dark skies indeed.

[Pete Presland]

most deep sky objects are referred to as "fuzzies" this is because they appear in most scopes as "fuzzy patches" of varing brightnesses. M31 is easily seen as a largish misty patch of light

[Matt Scunthorpe]

I love m42 has to be one of my favourite objects

[vexinstar]

thanks for the replies

indeed m41 is a beaut, and it was quite bright, seeing the darker patches in it gave it real structure, but if i got color filters would i be able to see more detail just for observing, or would that only be achived by taking long exposures through a dslr. not confident about investing in a dslr just yet till i am better things.

though the skies dont look too polluted, but if i am unable to see m31, i will have real trouble spotting the other galaxies?

i waited up till about 1 ish the other day and it was a whole different picture, really clear skies, no orange glow from the street lapms as i was tucked away behind my house, the only glow was from the west.

[Catweazel]

A Neodymium filter will give a little more contrast by making the background (space) darker, or a UHC or OIII filter would make a difference with nebulas, but as these are not cheap, it might be worth viewing with one at an astro club, if you have joined one. I say this as some folks say that they don't notice a lot of difference for the money? The Neodymium filter, is also a cracking filter for the Moon and Jupiter in particular.

[LukeSkywatcher]

A Neodymium filter will give a little more contrast by making the background (space) darker, or a UHC or OIII filter would make a difference with nebulas, but as these are not cheap, it might be worth viewing with one at an astro club, if you have joined one. I say this as some folks say that they don't notice a lot of difference for the money? The Neodymium filter, is also a cracking filter for the Moon and Jupiter in particular.

A couple of weeks ago i bought the Skywatcher UHC and Skywatcher Oiii filters and they really do work. They both work in different ways and on different objects. Orion Neb benefits from a UHC filter while other Nebs such as the Veil and the Rosette benefit from Oiii filter.

I think with a 130mm scope, a UHC would be the better choice. Oiii,in general work better with larger aperture scopes.

I say get yourself a UHC filter.

P.s.~~~using an 18mm EP to observe M31 is cutting it tight. Its a huge object. You really want to be using 25mm or such. Same with m42.

[Special K]

A couple of weeks ago i bought the Skywatcher UHC and Skywatcher Oiii filters and they really do work. They both work in different ways and on different objects. Orion Neb benefits from a UHC filter while other Nebs such as the Veil and the Rosette benefit from Oiii filter.

I think with a 130mm scope, a UHC would be the better choice. Oiii,in general work better with larger aperture scopes.

I say get yourself a UHC filter

ive taken this advice on board too but just haven't bought the UHC yet. Is interesting to hear how you are getting along with them, Paul, as I had read post of yours a few weeks ago before they had arrived. M42 looked fantastic the other night for me and with my 12mm BST I get it all in the FOV. But for M31 it is huge and I have yet to be in a position to see it properly. All I've seen is the fuzzy core. I have yet to get another (smaller) galaxy in my scope and so this next comment might be complete hog wash, but I think M31 is a special case because of its size. You cannot zoom in to improve the view and better conditions and a large aperture are necessary to achieve what we all are hoping to see. In Leo there are a number of galaxies that I want to pin down that I'm hoping will give a better result because they are smaller. I'm thinking that at least we can mag up in the hopes of capturing some detail. I expect we need very good seeing for these as well.

[LukeSkywatcher]

The triplet in Leo (M66) is an amazing sight.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

I kinda see where you're coming from special k, being unable to use much magnification on m31 means a lighter background sky and less contrast i guess. I only recently saw how dramatic this effect can be on my first outing with a hyperion zoom. I got m42 at the 24mm setting and it looked bright as ever, always a wow moment, but as i zoomed in the background sky slowly turned inky black, it was rather dramatic! At about 13mm was about best, still had the whole thing in view without darkening the nebula, but inky black sky and tonnes of contrast. I saw features i'd never seen before, swirling knots of dark nebulosity at the heart and the huge sweeping wings in either direction were even more majestic than usual.

I had never thought that the tactic of adding magnification to increase contrast was so effective!

To the op - i'm sure m31 and m42 technically have different magnitudes and surface brightnesses, but to the uneducated eye they'd probably look about the same to be honest. So if you can see m42 fairly obviously, you should be able to see m31.

Filters can help with nebulas, and the effects can literally mean something going from absolutely barely visible to rather obvious.

However, nothing - no filters, no aperture, no tricks - nothing will EVER trump proper dark adaptation, or good dark skies. If you want to see what your scope is truly capable of, even if you only ever do it once, take it waaaaaay out into the sticks, sit with no light for a good 20 minutes or so, and then point it and m42. Your head will literally explode.

[Moonshane]

from your description of site, you'd be able to see M31 with bins easily enough. I can see it with 7x bins from home and saw it last night at my school space club (really bad light pollution near Didsbury) in the 9x50mm finder. I'd say the core is about the same as M42 but then it's a variable amount of fuzz depending on aperture and conditions. it's knowing what to look for that helps. it will look a bit like this image pulled off the web

[vexinstar]

thanks for the pic, more of an idea of what im looking for now, and didsbury isnt all that far from where i am, and considerably more light polluted than here too.

with being away from majorly lit up areas, me being in a village and a lot of farm land nearby (not that i can use) the sky is rather dark, only really houses and street lamps to contend with.

im going to have another look about tonight, but with the moon being quite bright will it really be possible with m31 being relatively close to the moon?

[vexinstar]

just had a look on my iphone app starwalk and it shows lots of different thing to see in orion, m78, a nebula in the belt (left star) these look like they would be easier to find, would these show up well in the sky with a bright moon like tonights? or would they be drowned out?

sorry if they seem like silly questions

[John]

Moonlight in the sky is not good for deep sky objects. You can just about see the brightest ones but they are going to look far from their best. Even M42 and M31 get washed out by any light in the sky, man-made or moon-made, surprisingly easily. Pale shadows of what they can look like with the same equipment under a dark sky.

[Special K]

just had a look on my iphone app starwalk and it shows lots of different thing to see in orion, m78, a nebula in the belt (left star) these look like they would be easier to find, would these show up well in the sky with a bright moon like tonights? or would they be drowned out?

sorry if they seem like silly questions

Starwalk is great but it exaggerates the nebulas big time. If they represented the objects to true scale the app wouldn't look as good so can see why they did it. However it can be a bit misleading! The Flame Nebula you are referring to by the belt does look grand on the app but I haven't been able to get it in view yet. As a pocket astronomy kit, I love it. But I'm finding it less and less useful as hard core reference material. I got the Cambridge Star Atlas and that is fantastic because it will represent objects to scale if they are over a certain size.

Previous quotes are so true: the dso's respond very negatively to any light and the moon is a particular killer!

[vexinstar]

after a couple of months searching, and tracking down m31, i finally managed to find it last night, i can see how i managed to miss it all these times, and the conditions werent perfect either, well the sky was but i was in a bit of a lit up back garden and the light kept interfereing from the kitchen. i had to spend a good 20 minutes looking at it, partly incase i moved my scope and couldnt find it again, but i turned to m45, then bck to m31 and bang! got it first time was quite a good night and set a mile stone for myself.