My first nebula

[crcooney]

Just got in from my second time out with my scope and successfully found the Rosette nebula, NGC 2237. I'm trying to better my navigation so I spent some of the night gazing but I found that finding the nebula was fairly easy once I got the stars right. Low light pollution where I was at allowed me to see some fairly dim stars and I got to it within a few minutes.

Being the first one that I've seen, I couldn't help but think "How will I know that I found it?" but the nice, bright cluster was quite obvious haha. I have a nexstar 8se and was using the 25mm ep that came with it, and I feel that this was fine, but I've read about some people going up to 40mm; what is your preference? I'm looking out for my next ep. 

[cloudsweeper]

A 30 or a 42 in that 'scope would give good FOV AND  exit pupil, still with decent magnification.  I would say those EPs were really necessary!  And with a 2" diagonal, you could get EPs with even more FOV.

Doug.

[newbie alert]

Visually what did you see the star cluster in the centre ?

[crcooney]

3 hours ago, newbie alert said:

Visually what did you see the star cluster in the centre ?

Yeah.

Luckily, I was able to see the 3 stars that surround the nebula, and could barely see the nebula visible to my naked eye. This made the difference because the "go-to" on the scope was not targeting well, and after scanning through the ep I came across a huge, bright cluster. I was scanning and thinking "how will I know that I found it?" and then there were many bright points and I said out loud "Oh Ok! there it is" haha. 

I can't put a number on it but there were "lots" of points (stars). I've heard that you can see a "grey-ish cloud", being the nebula dust itself (under perfect conditions I'm assuming) but I didn't see that. Just a large cluster. 

[newbie alert]

Most of the nebulosity is hydrogen alpha,which is invisible to the human eye as the bandwidth is too narrow..the dust lanes in the centre are quite narrow ..the grey cloud I'd of thought is m42..

This isn't my image by the way!