HELP!!!!!

[Jdavies]

Im strugling to find galaxies. i Have only located M31 but can't actually find any others. any advice on what eyepiece and what to look for.

[perrin6]

Jdavies,

Galaxies can certainly be quite challenging. Get your eyes as dark adapted as possible by not looking at any lights for 20 minutes, preferably as much as 45 minutes to maximize your eyes sensitivity. You can use a low power to scan for the galaxy but if you can find the exact starfield where it should be using a good map, use a medium power, about 100X -150X with your 8 inch. A higher magnification will darken the background sky and help the galaxy to stand out. Scan your eye around where the object should be as it is easier to see faint things when looking slightly to the side of it.

Try:-

NGC 7331 in Pegasus.

M77 in Cetus.

M33 in Triangulum

M74 in Pisces is quite challenging as although it is listed as brighter than 10th magnitude, the galaxy has a large apparent size and consequently the light is very spread out and dim.

Persevere as an 8 inch is capable of showing you many galaxies, and you will improve with practise,

Alan

[acey]

First make sure your sky is dark enough. If you can see the Milky Way with the naked eye you're fine, if you can see all the main stars of Ursa Minor you're OK. If your limiting mag is 4 or less then you can still see some galaxies but it will be a struggle. In addition to the ones suggested try M81.

An 8-inch at a dark site will give good views of hundreds of galaxies - at a light polluted site it may not be possible to view more than a few, with any aperture. M33 is a binocular object at a dark site but can be impossible from a light-polluted one because of its low surface brightness.

[Capricorn]

String of qustions:

What scope have you?

Guess light polution is poor, Manchester.

Is the question in relation to:

Where are the galaxies to look, or, you know where they are but they cannot be seen/located

People are talking about an 8" scope but I cannot see where it says you have one of those.

[johnkirkpatrick]

also if the moon is out, don't bother lol

[Sam]

Galaxies are a real challenge to see. Even with a large telescope it takes patience and perserverance. Often Stellarium or Cdc will depict a galaxy as being quite large and the initial thought is they must be easy to see, unfortunately this is not the case. They are indeed large in the eyepiece but their brightness is spread out over quite a large area.

As mentioned probably the best galaxy to go look for is M81 as this is very bright and will pop out of the eyepiece as a very bright fuzzy object. It's companion M82 will also be quite easy to see. The next best one to have a look at M51 which can be a little tricky to find but is quite bright and the core will be easy to spot - with some very well dark apapted eyes you should also be able to see the spiral arms.

Things get a bit tougher after those galaxies. A good challenge is having a look for M33 which is huge but very tricky to spot in the FOV. In binos it's not too hard to spot as it appears as brightish patch in the sky (off the end of triangulum). Through the FOV you can see some of the brighter knots of the star forming areas of the galaxy and if you adept at using averted vision you can sometimes see the structure (the conditions have to be pretty good for that though).

What you're really looking for with galaxies is the subtle changes in the background which will give you some idea of the scale of the objects. It takes a while to get good at seeing galaxies and after a while you can start hunting the very faint ones which can be very challenging (like M74). The key thing is dark skies with little or no light pollution, good conditions, dark adapted eyes (give it a good 40mins) and well a collimated scope (if you're using a reflector).

Sam

[Jdavies]

i Have a skywatcher explorer 200p on a eq5 mount

[Chris H]

Have a look for M81 and M82 near Ursa Major they look great especially when seen together in the same FOV.

[Jdavies]

Love too but there seems to be the loom of clouds every time i get the chace to gi and have a veiwing

[perrin6]

i Have a skywatcher explorer 200p on a eq5 mount

Oh well, with a scope like that your laughing all the way to the galaxy bank. I saw many dozens of galaxies with my rickety old homemade 8 inch from a suburban area with moderate light-pollution.

One thing to note; Dont take too much notice of the brightness rating ie. Some galaxies are rated eg 12th magnitude but although an 8 inch can see 12th mag. stars, a galaxy of that brightness would be more difficult to see as the light is spread out over a larger area than a star.

However I am often surprised when I see a galaxy that is rated as very faint. Often this is because some galaxies have very bright cores or perhaps a particularly bright spiral arm, galaxies are very varied in structure, every one is unique. Sometimes the conditions just happen to favour seeing them.

If you have some fruitless searching don't give up, sometimes you will have great galaxy sessions (unless you observe only from the middle of a city with very bad light pollution-sorry if this is true in your case) ,

Alan

[GJBC]

we all make the mistake of not knowing the locations of the objects. I to struggled at first so I decided to go with bins for a few nights just to get used to the locations I needed to point to at least then I had a better chance of getting the spotting scope on the right area of the sky. that worked well for me. i learnt to find and recognise a refrence star and then work from there with charts. i also used to wear an eyepatch to stop my viewing eye loosing dark adaptation when using light to look at the charts. after a while you get used to what you are looking for. once you get the process right you willbe away. and as i alway say to anyone who asks me start with a widest view then once located change eyepiece for a higher power one until you begin to loose clarity.

a good set of maps can be found here

Messier Maps

[SiriusB]

Next time you get m31 in your sights check out the m32 & m110 galaxies. m31's companions, if you haven't already done so.

m32's quite bright, but small.looks like a fat fuzzy star- should be in the same field of view as m31, southish of the centre of m31.

m110 is bigger,but doesn't stand out as well- you may have to nudge you telescope up a little from m31 depending on your field of view.

If m110 shows up clearly, its probably a good night for tracking down a few more.I use it as a quick test of sky conditions- if it shows up well thats the thumbs up, if its really faint& ghostly, conditions aren't so good.