having a little trouble

[saturns_rings]

okay, so i ventured out the other night, possibly thursday, in hope of finding m57.

i spent a good hour searching for it, and yet fell short

i had my SW 130pm out and there was lyra. so i found vega, scanned below and found the two stars that the ring nebula should be between. in the 25mm i get nothing, in the 10 (clutching straws hoping for a bit of luck), also nothing.

where exactly am i going wrong with this?

[thing]

You're not. I have trouble seeing them in an 8" Newt. They're just veeeery dim. Any light pollution at all and you have very little chance. The main reason I started photographing stuff is so I could actually see it.

[Talitha]

If I recall correctly, The Ring is the smallest Messier object (about 1 arc minute in size).. what's the fov and power of the eyepieces you used?

Visually at low power, M57 looks like a slightly out-of-focus star and can easily be overlooked if you're expecting to see something spectacular pop out at you.

Also, how are your skies? I haven't a clue if M57 is affected by light pollution or not, but it might be a factor.

Nevertheless, the combination of M57's small size and 9th magnitude might produce a bright enough SB (surface brightness) for you to detect, even if you need averted vision to do it.

[GazOC]

Unless you have VERY light polluted skies you will be able to see M57 in a 130mm Newt with no problem, I can see it easily with my 100mm refractor. The key is knowing what to look for. At low mag it will look like a blurred, out of focus star, if you then centre the object and use a higher power eyepiece then you'll see the Ring. You are looking in the right area but the Ring is not directly in the middle of the two stars its slightly offset, make sure you've really checked everything in your field of view before you try another area. I'll guarantee you've had it in your sights and passed over it at low power thinking it was a star.

[GazOC]

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,25494.0.html

[beamer3.6m]

With the same scope it took me over a year to find it.

Its a strange object - hard to find but once you have you will see it straight away from then on.

Your scope will easily see it but averted vision is best to help you initially see it. Also try keeping the scope moving slowing as your eye will pick up the 'blur' easier than by just starring.

[saturns_rings]

as soon as its next clear, ill be out and i'll have another hour or two with it to see what's going on. thanks for the help

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Odd, thats one of the things I could find from my light polluted site. Keep at it, its still there.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[legion48]

I imaged M57 last night. I could see it in the eyepiece too, from 10mm to 25mm, although it didn't look like a ring. It was just a blurry little patch of grayness.

[saturn5]

As Carol has said,it is tiny and i think people expect to see something larger,i know years age when i first found it(eventually) using a small cheap and nasty refractor that i had actually been looking at it but never realised that the little out of focus star was infact M57.

you are certainly looking in the right area and even from a light polluted sight you should still find it.Good luck.

[jakey]

If you do not use goto, it can at times be frustrating trying to find what you want to see.

However for just a few quid you can use a telrad and sky spot charts. They are really good. And unlike goto IMHO you also "properly "learn the sky

Here is a link

http://www.sky-spot.com/

[algol]

I imaged M57 last night. I could see it in the eyepiece too, from 10mm to 25mm, although it didn't look like a ring. It was just a blurry little patch of grayness.

try averted vision there mate, worked for me. transformed a small patch of faint greyness into a nice little smoke ring