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Easiet Nebula to find ?

mrwhippy14

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John

John

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M42 was my 1st - it's by far the easiest as you can see it with you naked eye on a dark night.

Other realatively easy ones are M57 (the Ring nebula) in Lyra and M27 (the Dumbell nebula) in Vulpecula.

M1 (the Crab nebula) is well known but can be rather difficult to find.

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Keiran

Keiran

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First one I saw was the ring neb M57, and it took me days... Id just bought the scope and after exploring the moon and Saturn... I thought that would be a good idea, how wrong i was, I very almost gave up. I had a non goto eq5 and no star maps, just a rough description of where to find it from the internet. It took 2 nights to find it.... But what an amazing feeling it was when i did. :)...

I will alwas remember it and to this day it is my favorite.

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Adrian

Adrian

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I only started 'properly' using my scope this summer (no M42) so M57 was my first.

Got my first view of M42 last night (instead of watching for geminids) - resolved the 4 main stars of the trapezium with the 8mm (112.5x). Really easy to find as I could see stars of the sword in the finderscope.

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LukeSkywatcher

LukeSkywatcher

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M42 was also my first nebula. My last one was M57 which i found by accident earlier this year.

I really really want to see the Rosette but this really only becomes visible when imaged with a camera so i am going to have to put a lot of time and effort into that one if i am ever gonna see it.

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glowjet

glowjet

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M42, was my first, as John has said, easy to find and observable with the naked eye on a good clear night, from a reasonably dark sight. Treat yourself to a copy of "Observing the Deep Sky"by Darren Bushnall, a wealth of information and how to sketch what you see, 10p from Amazon £2.75 incl postage,

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nightfisher

nightfisher

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Nope the sisters are a cluster. Its weird though because there is "nebulosity" surrounding them.

Let's call them a nebulous star cluster. Haha i have just invented a new type of celestial object.

Write it down. You will see it become a very common term over the years.

Very true, thats just what they are and the term will become commonplace:)

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Manok101

Manok101

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Nope the sisters are a cluster. Its weird though because there is "nebulosity" surrounding them.

Let's call them a nebulous star cluster. Haha i have just invented a new type of celestial object.

Write it down. You will see it become a very common term over the years.

I saw on some documentary that the pleadies were currently passing through a dust cloud, and that gives the illusion of nebulosity.

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tuc

tuc

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M42 was also my first nebula. My last one was M57 which i found by accident earlier this year.

I really really want to see the Rosette but this really only becomes visible when imaged with a camera so i am going to have to put a lot of time and effort into that one if i am ever gonna see it.

Hi LukeSkywatcher. Just thought I`d let you know that the Rosette nebula is, indeed, quite observable through your telescope; in fact, it can even be seen without a nebula filter (though using one greatly enhances it).

The trick is to wait for very good sky transparency/seeing and have fully dark-adapted eyes.

Although it is best seen in a wide-field telescope, the first time I saw it was through an eyepiece/telescope combination yielding a one degree field of view, which means I could not see the entire nebula in the eyepiece. However, by starting at the open cluster NGC 2244 in the centre of the nebula, I slowly scanned away from the centre until I could find a definite edge where faint nebulosity meets darker sky. The northern section is the brightest.

I have found that objects labelled "difficult" only means that they're less conspicuous - not impossible. So keep looking! You will see it eventually.

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toml42

toml42

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Nope the sisters are a cluster. Its weird though because there is "nebulosity" surrounding them.

Let's call them a nebulous star cluster. Haha i have just invented a new type of celestial object.

Write it down. You will see it become a very common term over the years.

sorry to burst your bubble, but "cluster associated with nebulosity" is already an accepted category. nebulous cluster is a bit less of a mouthful though!

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Staffy

Staffy

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M42 was the first one. M57 was the first one I needed a telecope to see. One night I tried mounting my camera on my EQ2 mount with the clock drive running and taking a photo of that part of the sky with a 200mm lens (not a telescope). I think I set the exposure for about six seconds. The Ring showed up in the photo as a greenish dot and when I went into Photoshop and zoomed in on the dot you could clearly see the dark bit in the centre. Not quite the Hubble Telescope I agree, but very rewarding for me.

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OutThereSomewhere

OutThereSomewhere

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I think I'll have to make a special trip out of town to view it, even with my Nexstar 6SE. I dont seem to be able to find DSOs & presume it's because of light pollution - or maybe it was the alignment. I got it to auto align but I'm not sure how far from the centre of the FOV things may be (or which eyepiece to use). I'm a noob, but a keen noob!

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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I would think that M42 would be visible even in quite bad LP. Look south east at approx 10pm - early hours and you'll see the constellation on Orion - the belt - three bright stars in a diagonal line is very obvious.

Below the left hand / bottom star (Alnitak) in the belt is a vertical line of stars - the sword of Orion. M42 (you are actually seeing M42 and M43 - you spy one you get one free) is in the middle of that line of what looks a bit like three stars. With any sort of magnification (7x upwards - binoculars are good first to see where it is) you'll see the nebula looking like a bright fuzzy patch shaped a bit like a handlebar moustache. Just above the nebula is a small group of stars, another DSO NGC 1981.

In the scope, more detail will be seen and I'd suggest you lowest power eyepiece (biggest number i.e. 25mm gives less magnification / more field of view than 10mm) first.

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