A Qustion of Degrees?

[Manok101]

When a star map or stellarium or whatever says X will be up in the sky at about say 51 degrees. Or that Uranus willl be 3 degrees away from Jupiter. How do you figure out how many degrees something is up in the sky so you know what it is you are looking at?

[JamesM]

Hi, The horizon is at zero degrees and the zenith (directly above you) is at ninety degrees. So everything must fall within that parameter.

James

[Paxo]

At arms length, the width of a finger is between 2-3 degrees of sky, a fist about 10 degrees, and a hand held wide open about 20 degrees.

Steve..

[perrin6]

The full moon is very close to being a half a degree = about 30 minutes of arc. Find out what sizes are the fields of view of all your eyepieces, this will help in locating objects eg. if an object is 2.5 degrees from a known star, and you have a wide-angled eyepiece of 1 degree field of view diameter, you know the object is 2.5 fields of view from the star.

If you have an an equatorial mount with setting circles and the mount is correctly aligned with the north pole you can find an object by finding out it's coordinates and moving the telecope until the position is on the setting circles in Right ascension and declination. If you have only a non-equatorial mount you will need a different set of coordinates for the object you're looking for - the altitude and azimuth.

Alan

[Paulb3098]

I recently brought a telrad red dot finder, I find this is a great help as the rings are spaced a 4, 2 & 1/2 a degree.