Nice and clear over Luton/Dunstable tonight.

[jimmyr]

Not Hundred percent if i have posted this in the correct place guys but i am sure someone will move it if not.

Anyway what a lovely clear sky tonight over Luton/Dunstable, plenty of Stars in view of my newly aquired Olympus Bino's.

I have been looking at an easy one and that is "Orions Belt" but i am confused as to a very small cluster i can just see if dropping down from the centre star of the belt, to me it looks hazey but if i strain these old peepers of mine it looks like a small square of stars, forgive my terminology this is all new to this old timer.

Wonder if anyone can help on this.

Thanks.

Jim

[jimmyr]

Well it would appear that what i was viewing was the Orion Nebula, bad eyes here but apparently it can be seen with the naked eye,well i needed my Bino's lol.

Jim

[ronin]

Yes, sounds like the Orion Nebula.

As you say can be seen by eye alone but without knowing what it is what you see looks ood.

Binoculars will show more shape, however you really need some magnification to start getting anything meaningful..

If you follow the belt stars sort of right and upwards (at times right and downwards) you will find a big bright orange star called Aldebaren, surrounding this is a cluster of stars = The Hyades, keep going along the "line" and another bunch of bright stars appear (whiter ones) these are the Pleiades M45. They are good in binoculars.

Just in case you want to tick off Messiers the Orion nebula consisits of either 3 or 4 Messier objects, so you managed more then one when viewing it.

[Charic]

jimmyr........Hi. Download the freeware program.  STELLARIUM this will help you with your searches

[bingevader]

Get on down to the Observing section, then there's an Observing with Binoculars section with in that.

Loads of useful info including this thread with links to binocular observing sites.

Cheers

[jimmyr]

Thanks again Guys for all your replies, and as for "STELLARIUM" what a great program, i was going to say "Little program" but it is far from that lol.

Couldent see the Sky last night so Downloaded this and spent couple of hours in it.

So thank you Star Forming.

Thanks Vacuum for your link also, very informative.

Thanks again to all.

Jim

[cantab]

I did spot M42 with the naked eye the other day, but it just looked like a star - and I suppose it is basically a multiple star with a surrounding nebula. Binoculars reveal the nebula fairly easily though.

And Stellarium is indeed great. With the light pollution settings set to match my location, I find at binocular magnifications the view is a good indicator of what I will see. Setting up the ocular plugin then makes it good to rehearse locating objects (just remember to turn off the option that stops you using the ocular without an object selected).