Want to go deeper

[charmedkelly]

hey all remember me, well im back!! for a little advice from my astro pals, well i recently upgraded from a Celestron Astromaster 114 to a Skywatcher Explorer 150P EQ3-2. with the help from pete, its a beautiful telescope rally amazing, been admireing saturn and the moon but i wanted maybe to view some nebulas or maybe even some galaxies i would love to hear any suggestions, i realise that the summer skies are quite hard to view DSO's, but i just wanna look for something more , open to any help

kellyx

[cjh2007]

Hi kelly, how about m13 or m57, i viewed them for the first time lastnight! A really big WOW!!

[charmedkelly]

hey tks i just posted a reply to ur personal message section,

kelly

[661-pete]

"'Tis the season to be globular...."

No, really, with the lighter skies, this is the time of year to go for globs: as well as the summer favourites like M13 and M92 there are plenty of fainter ones around to try for. In my mind no two globs are alike, each one has its own character...

[Sam]

I'll second that, globs are great at this time of year, M13, M92, M3 etc. The ring and the Dumbbell nebula are also great sights and quite bright, though the ring is quite small. Welcome back Kelly!

Sam

[charmedkelly]

wow seems like theres alot i could be looking at well tonight i will be trying to find them sam, are they quite hard to find

kelly

[Sam]

Kelly,

M13 is really easy to find and in many finderscopes it stands out as a fuzzy ball in the eyepiece it looks like a huge fuzzy ball. It's along one of the sides of the central square of Hercules. M57 Is a bit trickier and it's smaller but it's about half way along the bottom edge of the parallelogram in Lyra - it looks like a smoke ring.

M3 is between Bootes and Coma Berenices. If you find Arcturus (the brightest star towards the south) is about two thirds of the way between that star and the corner of Coma Berenices and up a bit, like M13 it'll look like a fuzzy star and close in the eyepiece it'll be a ball of stars. If you've got a star map handy, like Stellarium or a print out from Cdc then you won't have any trouble star hopping around.

have fun!

Sam

[charmedkelly]

Hi thanks sam for your reply im going to have a crack at it tonight, hopefully fingers X i might be lucky. i think my scope is capable of picking up the nebulas ect... i always get a wonderful site of saturs so i am very pleased

kellyx

[661-pete]

Actually I found M3 quite difficult to find - but mainly because it's near the zenith at this time of year and without a diagonal on the finder I get a right crick in the neck . "About halfway between Arcturus and Cor Caroli" is a start, but too vague to pinpoint the thing. Whatever, it took me a good half hour or more to find it last week.

M10 and M12 in Ophiuchus are a good pair, not far apart, to look out for, also the slightly dimmer M14 not far away. And if you can see far enough to the south, M22 in Sagittarius is an excellent object, superior to M13 I think. At this time of year this is for later on in the night.