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I can not make out any Messier objects in the eyepiece


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I am hoping someone can help me. I have just brought a Celestron Nexstar 5se 5 inch SC and the other night I successfully made my first SkyAlign with 3 stars, great! But when I used the GOTO feature to look at Messier (M) objects such as the Ring Nebular,, I could not see anything in the eyepiece. Tried at least 3 different sizes but to no avail. Maybe they were just too dark to see in the eyepiece? I still had the erecting prism in place, maybe I should remove it to let in a bit more light into the eyepiece?? Location was not great (Plymouth city outskirts) but I the sky was very clear and could easily make out the plough, arcturus with the naked eye.The moon looked great through the telescope just before dusk!

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The ring nebula is very small and faint and require a relatively dark sky to see it. The moon washes out a lot of faint objects...

Also, goto is not always accurate. You'll need to manually use the handset to get the object in the eyepiece. The more objects you center in the eyepiece, the better the goto becomes.

I guess you'll need a Telrad to help you point the telescope in the exact direction and subsequently have the object in the FOV.

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Try something a little brighter to start with...Put in M15 the Globular cluster and see if you can make out the fuzzy....ball..

If that works then go for M27 the dumbbell nebula..Its big and relatively bright as these things go..

Good luck..

Mark

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hi, i do not know anything about goto but i have found that when looking for dso its best to have well dark addapted eye's there 3.99 on ebay!!... seriously though at least 30 mins dark before hunting them down i have found. hope you have better luck Clear Skies Tim

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Hi, thanks for the advice above. I use a replacement star pointer for the alignment and it works perfectly. The GOTO works well, with the moon, getting it spot on each time...I will try a darker site later this week and try M15, M27 and the Ring Nebular again. Clear skies are expected next week!

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I'm assuming your finder is aligned properly given that you've completed a star alignment, but worth checking.

You could check the goto accuracy by finding an easily identifiable star such as Mizar in Ursa Major.

The Ring Nebula is actually quite bright but it is small, and can be missed at low magnification. It looks like a fuzzy star so pan around the area, and check in the finder that you are in the correct place.

Trying for M15 is a good suggestion, another bright glob which is well placed at the moment is M13 so try that too.

Good luck,

Stu

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I started with a 5" scope in very light polluted skies. The Ring Nebula was the first Messier I found but it took a lot of perseverance. I also used a 2", low powered EP (24mm), which was way better than a standard 1.25". Looking into the scope for about 20 mins and a small, very feint grey fuzzy started to appear... Another 10 mins using averted vision and it became apparent that it was a ring shape.

Took a lot of patience and a very comfy chair! I can't stress enough how much practice this took... I think it was at least 3 attempts and learning to just stay sitting at the scope, without taking my eyes off the EP!

Good luck!

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I started with a 5" scope in very light polluted skies. The Ring Nebula was the first Messier I found but it took a lot of perseverance. I also used a 2", low powered EP (24mm), which was way better than a standard 1.25". Looking into the scope for about 20 mins and a small, very feint grey fuzzy started to appear... Another 10 mins using averted vision and it became apparent that it was a ring shape.

Took a lot of patience and a very comfy chair! I can't stress enough how much practice this took... I think it was at least 3 attempts and learning to just stay sitting at the scope, without taking my eyes off the EP!

Good luck!

Couldn't agree more :)

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The ring nebula is very small and faint and require a relatively dark sky to see it. The moon washes out a lot of faint objects...

Also, goto is not always accurate. You'll need to manually use the handset to get the object in the eyepiece. The more objects you center in the eyepiece, the better the goto becomes.

I guess you'll need a Telrad to help you point the telescope in the exact direction and subsequently have the object in the FOV.

what did you mean emad about, "the more times you centre the objects in the ep the better it gets" ?
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Now I think of it maybe I did see a dark 'blue' colour after aligning to the Ring Nebular, maybe it was nothing but either way I will have to keep trying and spend a lot more time viewing through the eyepiece next time... I did see a very very faint 'cloud' looking at the Hercules cluster, well that hat it said on the controller.

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so goto is more like go-near-to?

I have 2 Celestron scopes with GoTo and I think that they are very accurate.

After setting up time, date, location etc, I always use the SkyAlign feature for aligning, which means I can choose any 3 bright objects (inc. planets and the Moon), and once confirmed, whenever I select an object, BOOM, in the EP. it is!

Obviously, it depends upon how accurately I've aligned the 3 alignment objects in both the finder, and the EP as to whether the object I want is dead centre in the EP, but even when I'm not being very accurate, it's usually only just off-centre.

I know that GoTo sometimes have bad reps for not being that user friendly, but I really do think that this is dependent upon the make. Celestron's SkyAlign is extremely easy to use (the manual is brilliant!) and I've never had a problem with it on either scope.

I've read other threads on this forum re problems with GoTo alignments and I'm shocked when I read what they have to do for it (ie polar align, choosing stars from a list etc).

Moral is - get a Celestron that does SkyAlign if you want a GoTo scope!

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Now I think of it maybe I did see a dark 'blue' colour after aligning to the Ring Nebular, maybe it was nothing but either way I will have to keep trying and spend a lot more time viewing through the eyepiece next time... I did see a very very faint 'cloud' looking at the Hercules cluster, well that hat it said on the controller.

Trust me, the longer you look, the more details you see! A very feint cloud could well resolve itself into a cluster given enough time!

With my light polluted skies, there are some Messier objects that just aren't bright enough for me to see in the 5" scope, so you may not be able to see all of them - dark skies are required for some objects (I didn't bag the Crab Nebula until I went to a dark sky site). However, I do think that if you go through the Messier list, and concentrate on the brightest objects, you should have no problems once you get used to the techniques required for observing!

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The first time I found it it was not for looking, as dead straight looking I could not see it, averted gaze scan around in the eyepeice as it might be there but you are not seeing it, looks a faint grey smudge in mine both times I found it, once eyes get better averted vision showed a vacant middle still a grey smudge.

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I have 2 Celestron scopes with GoTo and I think that they are very accurate.

After setting up time, date, location etc, I always use the SkyAlign feature for aligning, which means I can choose any 3 bright objects (inc. planets and the Moon), and once confirmed, whenever I select an object, BOOM, in the EP. it is!

Obviously, it depends upon how accurately I've aligned the 3 alignment objects in both the finder, and the EP as to whether the object I want is dead centre in the EP, but even when I'm not being very accurate, it's usually only just off-centre.

I know that GoTo sometimes have bad reps for not being that user friendly, but I really do think that this is dependent upon the make. Celestron's SkyAlign is extremely easy to use (the manual is brilliant!) and I've never had a problem with it on either scope.

I've read other threads on this forum re problems with GoTo alignments and I'm shocked when I read what they have to do for it (ie polar align, choosing stars from a list etc).

Moral is - get a Celestron that does SkyAlign if you want a GoTo scope!

totaly agree there rae, i can go to say saturn at 300x leave it for ages go back and its still spot on, better than these big dobs :grin:
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In my experience SkyAlign is usually pretty accurate, but every now and again it does not seem to want to play irrespective of whether I use 2 star, auto 2 star or sky align and then 're'align.

Maybe try M13 first ad that is easy to find and always nice to look at before moving onto M27 and M57. I normally start with 25mm EP and then use the 15mm subject to conditions,

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Set the scope up and tell the scope to goto Vega.

Centre this.

Then tell it to goto Ring Nebula, M57.

Being a short seperation there will be less problems and you should centre Vega easily, it is the big bright one.

On Celestrons if you hold the Enter button down it then sets the selected object (Vega) as the datum for the movement, which since it is now Vega means a small movement and better determination to get to M57.

As always start with a long eyepiece, you will want the widest field of view you can get to make life easy.

Don't go mad on magnification as that makes M57 dimmer and it is dim enough to start with.

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A couple of obvious suggestions to add.

Firstly, are you using your lowest magnification eyepiece (25mm or above)? Even a particularly well aligned goto will struggle to get something in the centre of an 8mm eyepiece. Also the fuzzier objects will be almost impossible to spot at a high magnification anyway.

Also are you sure you're in focus? The ring is a nicely defined but rather dark object. A poorly set focus could make it disappear entirely.

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Practically impossible with the waxing near to full Moon at the moment. Wait until it goes, that's prime time for nebulae and galaxy hunting,

Nick.

Good point, it makes a huge difference. Just before the clouds came over I found M57 easily but M27 is much harder to spot, I was using a 25mm EP. Good luck.
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Don't go mad on magnification as that makes M57 dimmer and it is dim enough to start with.

Whilst I agree don't go mad, I do think M57 is easy to overlook at low mag. Sometimes you just pop in higher mag and there it is. The smaller exit pupil darkens the sky background and the extra mag helps show it up. I could spot it reasonably easily with a 66mm refractor and I'm fairly close to Heathrow so LP is fairly challenging but it is still visible.

Totally agree about the moon though, best to wait until that is more favourable

Stu

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