M81/M82 Success... and feeling a little foolish.

[kaybee]

Tonight, with surprise clear skies I resumed my M81/M82 hunt, star hopping my way to the right area of sky.  After half-hour of searching, two fuzzy objects appeared in my eyepiece.  Unfortunately, on comparing the view with Sky & Telescopes Pocket  Atlas I quickly dismissed these as my targets due to them being in the incorrect orientation relative to each other, and none of the surrounding stars making sense.  I resumed my search.

Three-quarters of an hour later an embarrassing realisation dawned on me.  Lesson: Having the map in the correct orientation makes life much, MUCH easier and the sky a significantly less baffling place!

Feeling slightly stupid whilst I waited for some high-level cloud to pass I eventually found my way back to the two fuzzies.  This time everything made sense.  I’m pretty certain that I could just about make out the supernova, with averted vision.  Annoyingly the sky quality wasn’t as good as my first visit.
 

In other news there are two new additions to the kit... a 15mm BST Explorer and a Skywatcher UHC filter.  Love the view through the BST, I think the 10 and 25mm stock 'pieces may be replaced with Explorers in the not too distant future.  M42 looks even better using the UHC.

Anyway, after both Friday and Saturday nights out and a Three Peaks Challenge training hike today I should probably head for bed before I guarantee Monday morning uselessness.
 

[WaveSoarer]

Great stuff kaybee. It'll be a lot easier the next time you go look. I also had a quick look at M82 this evening and the supernova looked brighter than it did a couple of days ago.

[bbwonder]

I'm a novice too, and found it really tricky to find M81/82 originally.. but after a couple of times getting there, I realised a nice little star hop.

At the same distance above Ursa Major, as M81/82, there's a really wide triangle of stars - visible with the naked eye (and telrad) - M81/82 are just below the far left star.

I've taken a few nice photos of the Supernova, here's my latest, taken tonight;

[WaveSoarer]

That's a great image. The supernova is really bright there.

[Lanius]

Very nice image and a lovely reminder of my first view of both M81 and M82, never mind the supernova, which was also a first for me.

I tried to find M81/M82 using the star hopping directions in Turn Left at Orion, but after a 45 minutes' struggle, I tried to get at them a different way. I pulled up Star Walk on my phone, which has quite a considerate night mode, and with binoculars, found my own way.

What a wonderful pair of objects and the supernova was a real thrill. I even managed to pick up the faint smudge of nearby NGC3077.

The supernova blew my mind - to think how long ago the star *actually* died and here we are seeing it now. Astronomy eh? Never ceases to amaze!

[kaybee]

Great stuff kaybee. It'll be a lot easier the next time you go look. I also had a quick look at M82 this evening and the supernova looked brighter than it did a couple of days ago.

I'm hoping it will be, looks like there might be a chance tonight or Wednesday.

I'm a novice too, and found it really tricky to find M81/82 originally.. but after a couple of times getting there, I realised a nice little star hop.

At the same distance above Ursa Major, as M81/82, there's a really wide triangle of stars - visible with the naked eye (and telrad) - M81/82 are just below the far left star.

I've taken a few nice photos of the Supernova, here's my latest, taken tonight;

Thanks for the tip bbwonder.  I may give that a go as it was the lack of close proximity stars a I struggled with.  I was tracing diagonally throught Ursa Major as per TLAO and getting lost enroute.

~Keith

[LouisJB]

It's like anything, once you've found it you won't forget it, so consider it all good experience. The supernova is still really bright, here's one I took last night...

[furio]

I found it yesterday after a 15 min seach, following a diagonal through 2 stars of Ursa Major... that was my game plan after I studied my star tracker. I was kind of deceived however mainly because of the struggles with my 10 mm ocular when I tried to put more mag on the object.

Also the conditions were though I had to point it real close to my house roof and I had lights from nearby homes in that direction...

However, I was blown away by other objects Got my better view so far of the Great Orion Nebula

Will try again to hunt down M81 tonight if the sky clear up.