How my night went....and didn't....

[ddefoe]

Hi all, 

Just thought I would let you know how my night went tonight with the first clear skies in a few weeks!

Last time I went out i really struggled to focus on anything and followed advice and took it out in the day and tonight it was pin sharp straight away! Win there!

For the most part of tonight I was trying to get me C8 SCT aligned.....this did not go well as every time i aligned it with vega and others it missed the mark by a good 10 foot! Then I realised we were in daylight saving....after that it seemed to pick up better only a couple of cm out in the eyepiece! Yay another win

My aim tonight was to look for m57 and m27 as they are a nice height out my garden.....Unfortunately I didn't manage to locate either  although it took so long to align i didn't go through any calibration stars so i can't be 100% it was in the perfect place...anyway here are my questions..

 - Are there any hints on what I should be looking for with either of these....i was led to believe m27 could be seen with binoculars....?

 - Do I just have too much magnification to see these? I was using a 25mm eyepiece which gives a mag of 80x...is there a better magnification to view these at or should this be fine to be able to see them with my scope?

 - lastly....my mirror had a lot of condensation on it as it got cooler out, does this have an effect on what you can see?

Thanks All

[LightBucket]

Hmmm, your mirror should not have condensation on, as it is sealed in the tube on a C8 SCT, do you mean the front corrector plate had dew on as that would be normal....?

[Hayduke27]

Your eyepiece should be fine in terms of magnification.  Dew will definitely hinder your ability to find DSO's.  You should consider getting a dew shield.  If dew was condensing on your corrector plate, you'd notice while looking at the stars as well.  You'll get a lot more streaks and everything will just be a touch more hazy.  Keep that dew off!  If things do get dewey, don't wipe it away!  If anything, use a blow-dryer to dry things off again.  Wiping it will likely cause smudges and smears on your corrector plate, and you will then have to clean it and so on.

 

Keep those lenses clean, clear and dry and good look finding your Messiers!

[Tim]

Your post brought back some fond memories of my first adventures with a telescope.

Stick at it, with practice you will soon be pinning down even fainter objects.

[alhiggs]

I got my 130mm scope.last June still learning stick with it you will get there

[MarsG76]

Condensation on the C8 mirror??? Thats not right, normally you'd get condensation on the corrector plate if you dont have a dew shield and heater, but you should never get any moisture inside...

 

[ddefoe]

Sorry corrector plate!! ? 

[Stu]

M57 is surprisingly small and easy to over look at low powers. These show the view with your 25mm eyepiece on both objects. They won't necessarily be this bright but the size is right. Once you've found it, higher power should work well on M57.

A dew shield is a must really, you might even want a dew heater if it is very bad.

Keep practising on the alignment and you will get there!

[ddefoe]

28 minutes ago, Stu said:

M57 is surprisingly small and easy to over look at low powers. These show the view with your 25mm eyepiece on both objects. They won't necessarily be this bright but the size is right. Once you've found it, higher power should work well on M57.

A dew shield is a must really, you might even want a dew heater if it is very bad.

Keep practising on the alignment and you will get there!

Thanks that's great. What do you use to get these images? 

[Buzzard75]

51 minutes ago, ddefoe said:

Thanks that's great. What do you use to get these images? 

It looks like SkySafari to me, but I'm missing a trick somewhere with the eyepiece view. I need to find a tutorial somewhere on how to use that functionality.

M57 is pretty easy to find if you can find Vega, locate the major stars in Lyra, and you have a finder scope that's aligned correctly. M57 is almost dead center between Sulafat and Sheliak, which make up the bottom of the lyre.

M27 should be fairly simple as well as there are plenty of high magnitude guide stars available in Velpecula.

Depending on your light pollution though, it may make it a bit more difficult to see these fantastic nebulae. M57 is fairly bright and can be seen under moderate light pollution if you know what you're looking for.

[Stu]

58 minutes ago, ddefoe said:

Thanks that's great. What do you use to get these images? 

These are done with SkySafari 5 Pro on an iPhone. You can do something similar with Stellarium on a PC which is a free download

[Chefgage]

 

1 hour ago, ddefoe said:

Thanks that's great. What do you use to get these images? 

I find this option on skysafari to be very helpfull. I use the plus version of the app. The superimposed field of view circles make searching alot easier as it shows what you should be seeing. I have it set to show the field of view through my 25mm and 10mm eye piece along with my FOV of my binoculars and the rigel quick finder.

 

[Stu]

13 minutes ago, Buzzard75 said:

1 hour ago, ddefoe said:

 

It looks like SkySafari to me, but I'm missing a trick somewhere with the eyepiece view. I need to find a tutorial somewhere on how to use that functionality.

 

Quite easy. In Settings there are two options, Display and Equipment. In the equipment option you can setup telescopes, eyepieces, barlows and reducers, cameras and binoculars.

Once setup, you go into the display option and choose the combinations you want, you can set up to five at once. Make sure you select the button on the left to display the field of view circle on the star map.

Finally, tapping the top right of the screen displays a quick access menu to select and deselect options.

[Red Dwarfer]

13 hours ago, ddefoe said:

My aim tonight was to look for m57 and m27 as they are a nice height out my garden.....Unfortunately I didn't manage to locate either  although it took so long to align i didn't go through any calibration stars so i can't be 100% it was in the perfect place...anyway here are my questions..

Both were hard for me to find to begin with , but once found they became instant favourite targets - M27 stands out much better with an OIII or UHC filter 

[Buzzard75]

35 minutes ago, Stu said:

Quite easy. In Settings there are two options, Display and Equipment. In the equipment option you can setup telescopes, eyepieces, barlows and reducers, cameras and binoculars.

Once setup, you go into the display option and choose the combinations you want, you can set up to five at once. Make sure you select the button on the left to display the field of view circle on the star map.

Finally, tapping the top right of the screen displays a quick access menu to select and deselect options.

 

Thanks, Stu! I had my equipment put in, but I somehow completely overlooked the display settings in the menu.

[ddefoe]

Something I was struggling with was obviously what I'd looking at was essentially upside down to what I eat looking at on stellarium, is there a way to tackle this? 

[JOC]

10 minutes ago, ddefoe said:

is there a way to tackle this? 

A mirror?  Turn the printout upside down?

[ronin]

M57 is likely to be a problem, trying for it 3 weeks ago in an 8" SCT, could not see it visually. Put a small camera in for display and it was there. You do need "dark" to get it to stand out - you may be darker then we were, not exactly difficult.

Maybe need to consider a filter. Not sure if an OIII would be benifical.

Not sure about M27, strange cannot recall specifically looking for it or seeing it, seen it displayed to me but not visually. Which seems a little odd.

For both use low magnification to locate them initially, likely just a small dim patch. Trouble could be getting the low magnification on an 8" SCT.

[Stu]

38 minutes ago, ronin said:

M57 is likely to be a problem, trying for it 3 weeks ago in an 8" SCT, could not see it visually.

@ronin M57 is relatively trivial even in a 60mm refractor under moderate light pollution so you must have been looking in the wrong place.

M27 is another relatively easy one which should be high up on any new ie's list of target objects. Both should benefit from using a UHC filter.

[JOC]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

UHC filter.

I have been following this thread with interest as on the odd occasion I have looked for FGFs I too haven't found any.  Well except for M42 and I think that's just because Orion is so obvious.  However, I do have a basic UHC filter.  I must remember to try with that on and see if it makes a difference.

[Ricochet]

15 hours ago, ddefoe said:

Something I was struggling with was obviously what I'd looking at was essentially upside down to what I eat looking at on stellarium, is there a way to tackle this? 

Reusing @Red Dwarfer's picture because it shows all the parts I want to talk about:

When setting up your telescope in the oculars plugin on Stellarium (blue bordered buttons in top right) you will have the options for both horizontal and vertical flips. You will want horizontal flip but not vertical for your SCT. You can also set up a RACI finder as an eyepiece by ticking the "binocular" option.

M57 (green dot) is easy to locate because it is almost centred on the line between the "bottom" two stars in Lyra. It is quite small so you may need to up the magnification a bit depending on which eyepieces you have, 

M27 is quite susceptible to being washed out by light pollution or atmospheric haze so a dark, clear night is best. I prefer the simple star hop from Sagitta shown below. It is almost upwards at a right angle from the left hand star (red line) and both star and nebula are within the field of view of a 9x50 finder.

As nebulae are extended objects you probably want to keep the exit pupil above 2mm, which is a 20mm+ eyepiece in an f10 C8. Both should be visible as naked eye objects but if you want/need to use filters then you will probably need to increase the exit pupil/eyepiece focal length to compensate.

[rockystar]

M57 is pretty small, so it can be easily missed if you've not located it before, but once found it is pretty obvious even under light polluted skies. And it is relatively easy to locate -  i can normally get pretty close to it with just a telrad.

[ddefoe]

Went looking for m57 again tonight but no luck, I think this time however I was in the right place. It was in between sheliak and sulafat. I could locate the three stars in a small triangle but when looking for m57 it was just too difficult to locate. 

Now although I could find the group of 3 stars and sheliak easily I struggled with any stars close to m57 there is a w shape that I could not make out. 

Could my light pollution be that bad, that other thing is my neighbour has quite a bright security light out back that is on all the time, it lights up post my garden and makes it easy to see everything. Could this be the issue? 

 

[Helen]

It took me a long time to find m57 at the start, but I had more success when I used higher magnification as it is quite small and easy to mistake for an out of focus star at low magnification.  If you think a faint object should be in field of view try tapping the scope - eyes/brains are good at noting movement so you may pick it out as it moves.  Keep at it - it will be worth it.

Helen

[Stu]

32 minutes ago, ddefoe said:

Went looking for m57 again tonight but no luck, I think this time however I was in the right place. It was in between sheliak and sulafat. I could locate the three stars in a small triangle but when looking for m57 it was just too difficult to locate. 

Now although I could find the group of 3 stars and sheliak easily I struggled with any stars close to m57 there is a w shape that I could not make out. 

Could my light pollution be that bad, that other thing is my neighbour has quite a bright security light out back that is on all the time, it lights up post my garden and makes it easy to see everything. Could this be the issue? 

 

Are you talking about these stars, including the highlighted one which is mag 10.6? If so, I would think you should be able to get M57 as it has quite high surface brightness.

As mentioned, once you think you are in the right area, up the mag and pan around a little as it is a surprisingly small target. The second two images show the view in a 200p with a 32mm eyepiece (x37) and a 6mm (x200) so you can see how small it is at low power.