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Is this m42?


jonnydreads

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Been having great trouble with alignment with my 8se so decided to just point and hope again before my toes froze off.

I went to towards orion and slewed very slowly and managed to find a nebula... I'm almost certain it's m42 but It was white. Quite clearly white. Does the red colour come from exposure?  Or am I looking at something else. There were 3 or 4 stars packed quite close together towards the left of my viewpoint.

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Any colours visible in deep sky objects visually are very, very subtle at most. Mostly they appear to be shades of grey. With long exposure imaging, the colours you see in the pictures become much clearer.

The 4 stars you spotted were the Trapezium cluster at the heart of M42.

 

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amazing!! what a sight, its the first nebula I've seen as I've only had this telescope out twice due to the weather, Im using Baader zoom at 24mm and it looked great, the dew on my telescope is slightly annoying and I'm thinking of  either making or maybe buying a shield... other than the dew, the bad weather, my frozen feet, my wife who keeps turning on the kitchen light, and my general lack of knowledge, I'm really enjoying it! thanks for the info

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Camping mat is indeed the perfect material. Best of all is to add a heated dewstrip beneath it. If you become fogged up you can put the tube to horizontal and drape a warm dry towel over it so it covers but doesn't touch the corrector. This will get you going again for a while.

Olly

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To get the best from your scope it needs to be aligned properly, to help you get a planesphere which will show the sky at your location and then you can pick out the stars that match the handset. This is what I used when I first started out to find my way around the sky. Des

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On 08/01/2019 at 20:37, jonnydreads said:

other than the dew, the bad weather, my frozen feet, my wife who keeps turning on the kitchen light, and my general lack of knowledge, I'm really enjoying it!

Ooooh. How many of us can relate to all of that!!!?

Well done for observing and noting the Trapezium. I also mentioned on here a while ago about the four small stars in the centre to then read all about their fame afterwards. Clear skies!

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On 08/01/2019 at 21:22, jonnydreads said:

Been having great trouble with alignment with my 8se so decided to just point and hope again before my toes froze off.

I went to towards orion and slewed very slowly and managed to find a nebula... I'm almost certain it's m42 but It was white. Quite clearly white. Does the red colour come from exposure?  Or am I looking at something else. There were 3 or 4 stars packed quite close together towards the left of my viewpoint.

Hi, good job !

The 4 stars in the trapezium should be easily visible, certainly with a 8" SCT, the color should be blue -ish tinted, but very faint off course

when observing conditions permit and your scope is well collimated and your eyes are dark-adjusted, check M42 again and look if you're able to see 6 stars, but the 5th an 6th stars are very faint. 

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On 09/01/2019 at 06:04, jonnydreads said:

Good shout thanks, my wife's yoga Matt almost disappeared 

Have a care - I saw a yoga mat in the Range, I though that will be handy expecting it to cost a few quid. It was TWENTY POUNDS for a sheet of foam just because it has a pattern on it!

 

You won't be popular if you chop up one of those!

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