First Hunt

[carpman]

I finally got a few descent viewing hours last night , london smog cleared for a while so setup scope polar aligned fairly quick with the use of polar finder great , scope wont take long to cool as its kept in my shed ...

Right where to start i'm thinking quite excited with having a clear sky ok quick butchers at jupiter ( check dec and ra just to see how close there are they're v close i know they are mostly cosmetic ) I tried a bit of A-focal with point and shoot cam but Pics came out rubbish then got called for me Dinner sod it ( i know wot your all thinking it clouded over before i got back out ) well your wrong it was still clear right grab my laptop and start stellarium up the garden i go "its freezing"

I decide to try and look for the horsehead have tried before and not seen it , still no joy i tried all different combi's of eps (i'm beginning to wonder can it be viewed visually) ok where to now right back to lappy

Next i check round orion to see where to go , right i'm off to have a look at m42 again to see if i can see it any better than on my first visit , yeap defo better viewing can see loads more tonight head north to check out ngc 2169 ok its not bad but the most important thing is i found it right west to pleiades found that straight now thats a lovely sight bundles of start i could even make it out in my finder scope ok times gettiing on and i'm freezing back to lappy for final time lets see if i can find Andromeda go slew round to rought area cant see it double check my position with naked eye ( yeah looks about right ) but still cant see change ep combis see if it makes a differance nah cant find it and then i spot what looks like a small cotton wool ball i thinks thats it but i'm a little disappointed with the view checked out dif combo again not much better still no detail (After checking 12dstring fov calc tonight i dont thing it was ...) , right i one look at pleaides then i'm off indoors cant get over what a lovely sight that was .

ps i must say that after i had found the above i checked/cross referenced with setting circles and they were about right maybe not spot on but they were close enough to be able to get me in the right manor

[gareththegeek]

Don't know what kind of scope you are using but I believe the horsehead nebula is mainly a photo only target.

The 'cotton wool ball' could be Andromeda or more specifically the core of Andromeda, in my 100mm refractor under dark skies I can make out a fainter much larger patch around the core, too big to fit into the view at 45x. I think you need more like 8"+ to see any more detail on it.

I find the setting circles on my CG-5 mount are accurate enough to get the object I am looking for somewhere in the view finder, I use them all the time.

HTH