What are the brightest visual DSO's?

[Johnboy2011]

Hi,

Looks like there might be a break in the cloud so with Jupiter low and Saturn late in the night I thought I might tackle a DSO or two visually.

I have fairly bad light pollution and I'm looking for something fairly easy. Would this be Orion Nebula and Andromoda?

Any tips or ideas really welcome.

Thanks,

John

[ronin]

Andromeda is actually pretty dim. Sort of a dim but big. The way things are measured means that all the light off of it is taken into accout.

Orion nebula and Pleaides are the bright ones.

[Johnboy2011]

Thanks Ronin

[Doc]

I would go for

M45

M31

M42

M81/82

[Ad Astra]

Several nice things that are naked-eye visible for us here in the desert. I'm not talking pristine skies, we observe from the football pitch and there are parking lot lights (the sodium kind) within 500m of our site.

We can see Orion's nebula (below the leftmost star in the belt)

The Pleiades (star cluster in Taurus - high in the sky at sunset)

The Double cluster in Perseus (this is a marginal view - I can spot it easily enough, but the beginners have problems)

The bee-hive cluster in Cancer is also up later

Also a couple of nice clusters in Puppis (below Canis Major in the south) if you have a good enough view to the south.

Those should get you started!

Dan

[Johnboy2011]

Thanks Doc