Struggling to find targets to image.

[CraigD1986]

Hi All.

I'm having a little trouble finding targets to image and was hoping someone might be able to help. I have a Skywatcher 72ED DS Pro with a ASI533MC Pro on a Star Adventurer 2i and I'm finding that so many good targets are out of reach. If they are too high in the sky, the scope points so far up, which means the back of the scope and the camera is so low that I only get a couple of hours of imaging time before the camera hits the tripod legs or the mount itself. Also, I prefer to start on targets that are in the east for the same reason.

I've already imaged the heart, soul and Pacman nebulae in Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pleiades, etc and am looking for something new but nothing seems to be accessible. I also tend to point south as our back garden is south-facing so I haven't yet explored the sky towards the north. I use the SkyView app and Stellarium but I find that deep sky objects are hard to find on these applications unless you know where to look and zoom in.

A Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro would be a good solution as then I could set a plan in my ASIAir Plus to image several targets in one night and build up imaging time slowly but my wife seems to think it's ridiculous to spend £1400 on a mount. When using a non-goto mount, it's hard to frame an object perfectly the same across multiple nights so hard to combine multiple nights imaging.

[newbie alert]

The higher the target is the better, clarity wise.. 

Totally agree with your issues with framing, a mount with proper goto functions will make things far easier, especially once you reach into the realms of platesolving 

But if you want targets rising in the east , plenty of winter targets rising which will perfect for your 72mm

Edited November 11, 2022 by newbie alert
Added info

[CraigD1986]

Yeah, higher is better but due to the size of the scope, I get contact with the mount within a couple of hours.

Plate solving is great with ASIAir but with a manual mount, there is a lot of fiddling to be done