NGC 6543 in Draco help

[C7tsj]

How easy is it to find NGC 6543? Spent about 30 mins last night trying to find it but no joy. Was mainly using a 10mm but also tried a wide filed piece to try and give me as much FOV as possible.

Can someone confirm what it will look like in a basic scope? Found plenty of other DSOs last night but this one eluded me.

Thanks.

[cotterless45]

Think that you're going to need a bit more aperture. It should appear as non stellar and disappear if you look directly at it, like £20 notes !

Nick.

[C7tsj]

Think that you're going to need a bit more aperture. It should appear as non stellar and disappear if you look directly at it, like £20 notes !

Nick.

Ah well, worth a try anyway.

[AlexB67]

I was looking at this little beauty last night.  For me this a bit tricky since it points towards town with bad light pollution, so had to wait for it to rise a bit. I don't know how much of it you would see in a smaller instrument such as yours, but this is how I went about it anyway. By eye locate Chi Drac and  zeta drac below urso minor, from this you can make close to a isosceles triangle with a red dot finder or whatever pointer you use that should get you very close to the ball park.  For me It was then matter of looking around a little bit that area at lowest power.  What you are looking for there is a pair of stars one of which had a distinct blue colour, in my 10  inch scope it was an easy give away since even in my lowest power eyepiece ( 48x)  it appears like a sligthly blurred star, not sharp, not disimilar to a tiny unresolved glubolar cluster, then throw in the higher power  and a UHC and enjoy

This was an a pretty bad side of the sky, so I imagine in your instrument under good skies this should be a doable target, surface brightness is about 15 so don't give up   C6 wil look like the blue dot as  I roughly drew it, though it will not be as blurred as I indicated there, but it gives a rough idea what you are looking for at lower power. I expect that in the smaller aperture this blurring will be hard to tell, but hopefully the colour will be obvious enough in smaller scopes under good skies.

[C7tsj]

I was looking at this little beauty last night.  For me this a bit tricky since it points towards town with bad light pollution, so had to wait for it to rise a bit. I don't know how much of it you would see in a smaller instrument such as yours, but this is how I went about it anyway. By eye locate Chi Drac and  zeta drac below urso minor, from this you can make close to a isosceles triangle with a red dot finder or whatever pointer you use that should get you very close to the ball park.  For me It was then matter of looking around a little bit that area at lowest power.  What you are looking for there is a pair of stars one of which had a distinct blue colour, in my 10  inch scope it was an easy give away since even in my lowest power eyepiece ( 48x)  it appears like a sligthly blurred star, not sharp, not disimilar to a tiny unresolved glubolar cluster, then throw in the higher power  and a UHC and enjoy

This was an a pretty bad side of the sky, so I imagine in your instrument under good skies this should be a doable target, surface brightness is about 15 so don't give up   C6 wil look like the blue dot as  I roughly drew it, though it will not be as blurred as I indicated there, but it gives a rough idea what you are looking for at lower power. I expect that in the smaller aperture this blurring will be hard to tell, but hopefully the colour will be obvious enough in smaller scopes under good skies.

Thanks very much. I think I was looking slightly lower in the constellation so just need to persevere. Also. It was fairly low in the sky so likely I need to catch it at a diff time.

Cheers,

Mark

[mdstuart]

Yes have another go..its on the end of a little row of stars next to the star at the end of the row.

It is relatively easy when you find it to spot its a blob not a point..

With more power it becomes a bigger blob!

I would also try the eskimo planetary in Gemini which is high up at the moment and is an even brighter blob (technical term).

Mark

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[deepspacehunter]

It is a Beautiful TURQUOISE in the C11 !

[peteradams]

How easy is it to find NGC 6543? Spent about 30 mins last night trying to find it but no joy. Was mainly using a 10mm but also tried a wide filed piece to try and give me as much FOV as possible.

Can someone confirm what it will look like in a basic scope? Found plenty of other DSOs last night but this one eluded me.

Thanks.

Gotta admit, it's a bit difficult to find because it's out in the middle of nowhere. Get the area in your finder scope, and then use your widest eyepiece. Then keep increasing the magnification little by little if you can. The Cat's Eye's visual magnitude is 8.3, so you should be able to pull it in with your scope, I've seen it with a 90mm. 

Here's a sketch done using an f/5 120mm refractor... not perfect, but it might help guide you in.

The faintest stars are in the low 13th magnitude. The field of view is a bit over one degree, and the magnification was 67x. North is up, west is to the right, just like they are in an atlas or astro program. The nebula will probably look stellar till you increase the magnification. Then it will look like a little ball of brushed satin. Don't look directly at it, because it will vanish... planetary nebulae are slippery little devils, lol. Use an O-III filter if you have one, and good luck. 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Here is my report of when I found it using my C8:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/117061-september-18-2011-dodging-clouds-but-a-nice-run-of-dsos/

It has good surface brightness, and is non stellar above 50x magnification. Look for something that almost looks like a little version of Uranus: same distinct blue-green colour. I think a 4.5" scope should be able to find it at mag 8.1.

[AndyWB]

Found plenty of other DSOs last night but this one eluded me.

I've only looked at it once, in my 130p, and it too 3 attempts, and was hard even then. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. I found that it's colour gave it away, and when I increased the magnification it started to look like a disc. It wasn't a "slap you in the face obvious" target by any stretch, and it seemed dim to me in the 130p.

[AlexB67]

I think also the larger aperture instruments will have a little benefit  at the same magnification to make finding easier. The non stellar nature and colour become more clearly defined. I can actually tell in the 28mm Maxvision with a magnification of 42x in the 10 inch scope that it is slightly fuzzy and nonstellar. Having seen it in a few times now I can find it in the 5 inch scope also, but I am not sure I would have found it that easy without what I learned in the bigger scope.  I recall the pattern now as shown in that sketch linked by Peter, the 3 brighter stars sort of south, south east form a curve, and draw/imagine a line through and straight on goes right through the cat's eye.   

[Mike73]

My sketch probably wont help the OP much as it was with a large aperture but I recall finding it quite tricky to find and basically just swept the area at low power until I found a star that just didnt look right, then I simply increased the magnification to see more detail.

[AlexB67]

Love that sketch mike , some cracking detail there.

[acey]

Main thing when trying to find any DSO is to use a good map - good enough that you will be able to get close enough to have the target in the field of view of the main scope. If the map is not detailed enough (e.g. only goes down to about mag 6) then there will be large blank areas, and if your target is in one of those you'll have trouble finding it. If the map is too detailed then you risk getting lost. I would recommend the S&T Pocket Atlas as a very good one to use.

What you don't want is to try and find DSOs by getting the rough area using the finder then sweepnig around with a low-power eyepiece. This works for very big, very bright objects at a sufficiently dark site - but with something small like a planetary nebula you generally need greater accuracy.

[swamp thing]

Good advice from acey above. Good maps are paramount to successful deep sky observing IMO

I've only observed this through a 16" scope, so I can't really help you on how it appears through smaller apertures., sorry.

[scarp15]

Good map (prompted by a forum member, I use post-it index arrows to mark targets) and a star filled sky, to enable you to navigate your way to the object.

[C7tsj]

Thanks all. Had a very quick go again last night but still no luck. Agree I need a gd map first but I won't be defeated!

Lots of gd advice here and much appreciated.

Mark