New to Astronomy and Hello to you all

[laudropb]

Hello and a warm welcome to the SGL . You have chosen a great scope to learn the night sky with. Good luck with your future sessions

[glowjet]

Hi Night Hawk and welcome to SGL, If you are not able to take advantage of a club, at least you have just joined one of the biggest Astronomical group forums there is and your SW 200 Dob ranks as one of the most popular scopes in use. Having trouble locating M31, between 8.00 and 9.00pm in the night sky you should have Cassiopeia and going slightly up and left Perseus. If you use the two stars of Cassiopia, Shedir (Alpha Cas) and (Caph Beta Cas) as a base line, moving left they point to a bright star Almaak (Gamma And) now drop vertically down to the next bright star below, Mirach (beta And), scanning slowly right from here M31 should come into view with a wide field eye piece, I can quite easily locate it with 10x50 binoculars. What you may find of even greater interest, is Comet Lovejoy, if you go back to Almaak and then scan slowly right towards Cassiopia you should see it as a fuzzy ball, but with your scope you may also see some tail detail, as the times I have observed it, it has only with bins. You will get a better understanding of what is detailed above, if you look it up on Stellarium, enjoy    

[Vox45]

Hello and welcome to the forum

Clear skies !

[Night Hawk]

Thx for all your comments. I will install Stellarium and take on board comments to find m31 and comet lovejoy. I would like to see that. I've already dl a star chart to find that. Happy days. Thx again

[Charon]

Welcome aboard.