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Observing Leo Triplet with Travelscope 70mm


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Dew you can make your own dew shield. Could be a piece of rolled black card held on by rubber bands. It could be a plastic black flower pot you cut up and held on by rubber bands. A dew shield will help fight dew and reduce street lamp light scatter. If nothing else to hand even an empty cornflake box could be used but do something so dew doesn't spoil your observing.

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1 hour ago, subhas barma said:

My sky most of time , cover with cloud . But most importantly , my sky is very light polluted . Please , tell if any of kind of filter , that help me ? 

Subhas - with a reasonable aperture and lowish magnification, you should be able to see those galaxies - but just as fuzzy patches: one circular, and one elongated.  

Some light pollution shouldn't be too great a problem, but wait until it's not cloudy, because poor transparency is not good for viewing faint objects.

A light pollution filter or a Neodymium will not make much difference if there is wispy cloud hanging about!

Keep trying!

Doug.

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Unfortunately filters don't help with galaxies. They tend to have the opposite effect and make them harder to see.

If you can only observe from a heavily light polluted area then you may get more satisfaction from the hobby by targetting objects which are less affected by light pollution such as the Moon, planets, double stars, star clusters, planetary nebulae and, with the appropriate filtering, the Sun.

We can't all have dark skies but astronomy still has a lot to offer even so :smiley:

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Managed to get out for a quick session just as the moon was rising. I was able to observe both M81 and M82, although they were very faint. I didn't spend too long on them, as the sky was lightening due to the moon, and it's quite uncomfortable trying to observe at the zenith where they were. It was interesting to see M82 as something other than a grey fuzzy patch.

I tried M51 and M101 afterwards, but I think the moon had risen too much by then and/or there was too much cloud.

On 08/03/2017 at 14:53, happy-kat said:

Dew you can make your own dew shield. Could be a piece of rolled black card held on by rubber bands. It could be a plastic black flower pot you cut up and held on by rubber bands. A dew shield will help fight dew and reduce street lamp light scatter. If nothing else to hand even an empty cornflake box could be used but do something so dew doesn't spoil your observing.

This is probably the next thing I need to do to improve my observation sessions. I've been pretty busy lately, so haven't been out long enough to have to deal with dew, but with the moon waning I'll be trying this.

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I didn't go through all the previous post, therefore please apologise if some of my text doesn't add content.

With your 70mm aperture, the Messier galaxies in the Leo triplet are not too difficult under a sky where you can get a hint of the milky way. The third galaxy, the NGC one, is a bit tricky instead. You need to make sure that your eyes are dark adapted. Starting with eyepieces providing you an exit pupil of 2.0mm or slightly more can help because they make these targets a bit larger. Once you find them, i would increase the magnification so that you reach an exit pupil of 1.2-1.4mm. 

Don't expect Hubble photos on your eyepieces. These targets are faint, but when you catch them, with patience and study you might get some insight about their shape. 

Take your time, 20min at least looking inside the eyepiece, to get dark adapted. A hoody jumper can help. Remember that you are trying to spot targets that are not really behind the corner. It takes time to your eyes and brain to learn how these photons assemble to give us the view of a faint galaxy.

Have fun!

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I had a very clear sky two nights ago, and managed to see M65 and M66. No sign of the third, but I wasn't really expecting to see that one. I also tried M101, but there was no sign and I think I'm just going to have to find some darker skies for some of these galaxies.

The view was definitely clearer with the 8.8mm EP, but it's a bit too heavy for the mount to be really stable. I've been trying viewing with a coat over my head, but it tends to cause vibrations so it hasn't helped me much yet. I definitely need a new mount...

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