M27

[leo82]

Hi all,

How is the best way to star hop to m27?

I tried last night for a good 2.5 hours looking for it but failed miserably.

The way I tried was coming from albireo, the only problem is the stars seem to faint.

Many thanks.

[Stu]

1 hour ago, leo82 said:

Hi all,

How is the best way to star hop to m27?

I tried last night for a good 2.5 hours looking for it but failed miserably.

The way I tried was coming from albireo, the only problem is the stars seem to faint.

Many thanks.

Most of the time I don't star hop, I just 'deadeye' it with my RDF by making a rectangle with Sadr, Albireo and Gienah as in the attached picture. The other night I did this and was bang on first time.

What sort of finder do you have? A Telrad can really help here, so if you position Gamma Saggitae at about 5 O'Clock in the Telrad, M27 will be at 11 O'Clock. Even with an optical finder with 4 or 5 degrees field of view this same trick works, provided you allow for whether it is a straight through, right angle or RACI finder. You then just need tonpan the scope in the right direction with your lowest power eyepiece and you should get it.

[leo82]

Thanks for the reply Stu.

I dont have a telrad, I use a red dot finder, then check it in a cheap 6x30 right angle finder scope, then view in the eye pieces. This only works with the brighter stars though.

I'm no good at working out degrees in eyepieces and the like. If I were to position y sge star on the edge of a 25mm eyepiece would m27 be visible on the opposite side? 

[Rob Sellent]

Can't add anything to Stu's great post, but here is a useful finder map. If you still have trouble, below is a more detailed map. M71 and Albireo are also in the region and well worth a visit or two .

 

[Stu]

1 hour ago, leo82 said:

Thanks for the reply Stu.

I dont have a telrad, I use a red dot finder, then check it in a cheap 6x30 right angle finder scope, then view in the eye pieces. This only works with the brighter stars though.

I'm no good at working out degrees in eyepieces and the like. If I were to position y sge star on the edge of a 25mm eyepiece would m27 be visible on the opposite side? 

I think a 6x30 finder is around 7 degrees. If it is a right angle, not corrected then the view should be left right reversed. Pop Gamma Sagittae at about 7 O'Clock and then M27 should be pretty much central in the scope eyepiece, assuming the finder is aligned accurately.

Let us know how you get on.

[leo82]

Weather forecast says clear again tonight so I should get some time to try it out. This way seems alot easier than starhoppng from albireo. I like to look at albireo and the coathanger in this area, I didn't know about m71, I shall look for this too.

Many thanks.

[leo82]

I found it!

I also found out how useless my finderscope is.

My way of finding it was a last stab in the dark before throwing the towel in, sometimes it's at this point that things can actually work out for you.

The way I did it was to turn on stellarium and zoom in to y sge and look for star patterns, there is a triangle next to y sge that points near enough to m27. I followed the point of the triangle until I hit a row of stars which opened up into an open group of loose stars with m27 being in the middle. I checked all the stars on stellarium and they indicated I was indeed looking at m27.

I had to use averted vision and there was no way I could make out any shape to it, but I found it.

I checked out albireo and almaak, these looked the same with the striking colour contrasts, although, almaak took some teasing to split.

Now I also had a look at Polaris and think I split it but not sure any thoughts would be welcome. To the left of polaris between the 8 and 9 position I could see a faint star popping in and out of view, this was using an 8mm BST and a Barlow. I've heard people say it's hard to see because polaris is so bright that it drowns out it's  companion. I think this might of been what I was witnessing too.

[Stu]

Nice one @leo82! Glad you found it, that is proper starhopping, which is a skill that will serve you well for other harder targets.

To make life easier I would definitely try to sort a better finder. There is a thread on here from Mark at Beaufort who has done some excellent mods on his 130P including fitting a better finder which might help you. You can also make a shroud which really helps with contrast by cutting out the glare. It also helps stop your breath from blowing across the light path and improves the high mag capability by giving you stable air in the tube.

Don't forget that looking at a bright laptop screen will hurt you dark adaptation which will make it harder to see DSOs. M27 should be fairly bright, so keep the brightness right down and if possible get a sheet of red film to go over the screen if your phone or laptop.

Polaris can be tricky, important things here are cooling and collimation of the scope and seeing conditions. The 130P doesn't need alot of cooling so insure that would be fine. Collimation is important but can be fiddly so I would leave that unless you already know what you are doing. The Bob's knobs mod helps make adjusting the secondary much easier.

A wrap or two of PTFE plumbers tape on the focuser helps tighten this up. Accurate focusing also helps bring out faint secondary stars. Your description sounds right for Polaris, with good conditions the secondary appears as a tiny pin point of light, with enough power it will be well separated from the primary.

The 130P is a very capable scope and I have split some very tight doubles with mine; the double double and Pi Aquilae are two examples.

Have fun!

[leo82]

I will definitely look into a better finderscope. The other mods look like there worth doing too.

I have it collimated now to the best I can get it, using a chesire collimater rather than a laser collimater, then checking it on an out of focus star regularly.

Fortunately my phone has night mode and stellarium has the red light feature, I also put the scope out while it was still light to cool down.

I just need to get out more and gain more experience 

[Stu]

Good stuff. Can you get anywhere a bit darker too? The scope is really surprisingly capable if you get in under some decent skies. Even if not, it should be good on the brighter objects.

[leo82]

Theres not much I can do about the light pollution unfortunately but double stars seem the way to go judging by the feeling of splitting stars last night!

[John]

Well done on sticking with it and finding M27

If you can get hold of one, a UHC filter helps increase the contrast of nebulae such as the Dumbell even if your sky has some LP issues.

[leo82]

Ah I think I have one of them, an ebay special, i think it's called ebony. 

Will I need a better one than this or are they all the same?

I know nothing about filters.