How to find M3?

[virtualpilot45]

I spent 1/2 hour last night trying to find M3, in vain! I was looking in between Arcturus and Cor Caroli, but does anyone know any tips for finding this seemingly elusive cluster?

Thanks in advance!

[Nexus 6]

Hi virtualpilot

try looking on a Moonless night, you did'nt say what power eyepiece you were using?

of couse it may still be visable, you may have been looking at it and not realized and you just need to have another go as it does have a Visual magnitude of around 6.

I had a look at M13, Vm of about 6.5 two nights ago it was no were near as good as normal, it was a test though as I wanted to see what, if any, reflection would be present due to the washed out sky, a consequence of the Moons domination on such nights. I was using a Televe Nagler giving x180 power, it was visable but as I said was nothing like the oustanding object we can observe when we have good dark skies

[WayBig]

...off the top of my head, the last few times I star hopped to it I think it was 2 and a bit finder scope widths above arcturus....something like that, check that in your planetarium software of choice.

Faint fuzzy patch at low mag, under edge of small town light pollution, but can take high magnification once you've located it

[Ursa Major]

You could draw an imaginary line from Arctures to Cor Caroli and then use the two stars beta com and gamma com in the constellation Coma Berenices as a pointer to intersect the line and M3 should be there ( use as lower power eyepiece as you can, no more than x50, only add the power when you’ve found it). If not then move the FOV around a bit remembering where you began (otherwise you may have to start over again).

[virtualpilot45]

I'm going on holiday tomorrow, so I'll have another go when I come back, at least the moon will be waning by that point I was looking through my finderscope, which is, I think, 6x30. Is there any chance I could take some long exposures with my camera while piggybacking on the scope and adjust the RA/DEC until I found it?

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Try to get it in the binoculars first (M3 is easy with both my 10x50 and 15x70 bins). Usually it is much easier to find it with the scope once you get it in binoculars.

[pook]

I've found this a couple of time now. I just go straight up from Arcturus until I see it.

[AWR]

Do you have a star atlas? I found M3 at SGL6 with help from Tom (Hypernova).

Start at Muphrid (eta Bootis), go north to 6 (about 3 deg), north to 3 (about 4 deg) and then north again to M3 (about 3 deg).

HTH

Andrew

[Nillchill]

I used this and found it straight away a few nights ago

Messier 3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

hope it helps

[Hypernova]

I found that a good star atlas helps as Andrew suggested, I took the path from Murphid and followed a couple of visible asterisms that were present in the pocket star atlas and appeared as a fuzzy "star" in the 50mm finderscope. I managed to track it down a last week whilst at my astro club meet near Nantwich.

[Bart]

I found that if you can locate it fairly easily in binoculars by moving up north from Arcturus using 10x50 or 15x70s you will find a triangle 'pointing' southwards in your field of view and M3 is the object at the upper left.

[BinocularSky]

You could draw an imaginary line from Arctures to Cor Caroli and then use the two stars beta com and gamma com in the constellation Coma Berenices as a pointer to intersect the line

I do something similar: I intersect the line from Cor Caroli to Arcturus with one from beta Com to rho Boo. If M3 isn't in the field, it will be towards Arcturus.