M97 Does she exist or am I going mad

[proflight2000]

Last night I decided to grab a few of the Messiers that I am missing in my list, M97 ( The Owl nebula ) was one of those, however some odd things started happening. When I entered M97 in my Celestron handset and pressed enter, it straight away went to M98, thinking I had made a mistake I slewed away from where I was to a known point then tried again, input M97 and pressed enter and then up came M98 in the handset. I don't think there is a corruption issue, but can anyone put any light on this?

[clarkpm4242]

Try M108 which is very close.

Also try direct entry of the RA and Dec coordinates to get you there.  It should also appear on a named objects list on the handset??

Good luck.

Paul

[todd8137]

It's very hard to see from most back gardens unless you r have a real dark site I have only ever seen a very dim view from a dark site with a 12"reflector it's tricky

Pat

[crashtestdummy]

Depending on your scope m97 and m108 could quite easily be in the same eyepiece view

[Davey-T]

Why haven't you got M42 on your list ?

Dave

[John]

M97 does really exist !!!

A UHC or O-III filter does wonderful things to confirm it's existence

The filter does not help the galaxy M108 at all though and rather kills it so I try and observe the pair unfiltered at low power and M97 with a little more power, filtered.

[Stu]

Not sure about the Handset issue, there does seem to be something amiss. The M108 suggest makes sense though and may get you there.

M97 is quite tricky but does respond well to a UHC filter. I got it recently with my 6" from a few miles south of Heathrow so LP is quite bad.

Stu

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AlexB67]

It's very hard to see from most back gardens unless you r have a real dark site I have only ever seen a very dim view from a dark site with a 12"reflector it's tricky

Pat

M97, M108 make a great paring in a 1.5 - 1,6 degree FOV. One of the finest sights around that area IMO.  FWIW, I have a 10 inch and find these very doable from my home yard with a healthy wad of light pollution and on a a few nights of good seeing provided some nice views from home with good dark adaptation while hiding under my hood ( much to the laughter of my missus  ).

I wouldn't t put them in the difficulty class of say M33 of M101 from a suburban site, though both with higher magnitude, but lower surface brightness.   Both the outline of surf board and Owl was clearly defined on a number of occasions for me from home, while M101 is really faint from home.

[jason.p]

Looks like a good sky here tonight. Going to have a go at M97 and M108. Looking back in my records I first saw them with the TAL exactly a year ago!

(Funny they're not in TLAO?)

[gooseholla]

Yes I found it tonight. It is very faint from my back garden and takes a little while and great dark adaption for it to pop out. As has been said, a UHC confirms it exists, turning a small patch a very visible whiteish grey. I saw no detail tonight, just a smudge. Keep at it, took me a few goes to find it.

[crashtestdummy]

It's much easier than m109,I struggle with that from dark sites with 16" for some reason!!!