Am I doing it all wrong? Oooeeer

[earth titan]

Newly purchased Skywatcher 150L.

2x Barlow, 25mm and 10mm eyepieces.

Moon looks fab at the moment.

Saturn looks lovely.

Seen a couple of open clusters M36 and M37 (I think).

Live in a light polluted area and was always of the understanding I would need to travel a bit to get clear skies, but what should I expect and am I looking right? I seem to be unable to find some of the galaxies / nebulas I had hoped.

What should I be able to see and at what sort of resolution and detail? Any targets to get me started? I am nothing if not determined.

Taa.

[zhgutas]

The best way to kind of get the feeling of what you really can see in a telescope, is browsing through various sketches, as those, IMHO are the best representatives of a real image in an eyepiece. I especially like the comparison between two or more different diameter scopes, such as in this site.

Marius

[ollypenrice]

Apart from M31 you will see little of the galaxies other than a small smudge of soft light like a highly blurred star. However, finding the little devils is a buzz!

Clusters look lovely and bright with star colour showing and bright nebulae like m42 show structure and detail.

What are you using as a finderscope? They are often far too small to do more than get you onto a star from which you can star-hop to your target.

Olly

[earth titan]

Well that's a relief. The one or two objects I have found look like the sketches. Will just have to look harder..

[Doc]

Like all things in life, it takes experience to find alot the galaxies and nebulas. Best advice is to learn the skies, and learn to star hop, after a while it does become easier.

[red dwalf]

the "seeing" conditions can also make a differance, i looked at the andromeda galaxy once only to be dissapointed by a smudge, then i tried it later in the month and could see the center of the galaxy as a bright light and the rest as a elongated white smudge but with alot more detail, not loads of detail but qiute abit more

[Uranium235]

Like the man above says, you will only see a few DSOs directly through the EP. If you want to see any further, you need a new set of "eyes" ie: a camera (since your real eyes are limited in what they can see "live").

Best to wait until the moon has gone away too as it washes out any nebulas.

You can try M45 (even though its a bit late in the year), thats an easy target - you should find it low in the west at about 9.30 pm. M42 is way too low now, so you wont see that again until Nov/Dec I reckon (same goes for Andromeda). But the beauty of the hobby is that you will see different things at different times of the year... personally i cant wait until M16 pops up in a couple of months