Nebulas

Linguo

I saw my first Nebula at the weekend in Orion with my Nexstar 8se, brilliant stuff, but was wondering how many can you see with the scope and your eye and how many you need to photograph and stack to actually see anything at all?

Flukey

If you haven't already done so, get yourself a good sky atlas and it will tell you where all the nebulas are. Some, like the Orion Nebula, you can spot with the naked. Binoculars or a telescope bring them into better view. For now just focus on finding them and enjoying them, and leave thoughts of photography for another time.

backboiler

See if you can find the Andromeda Galaxy/nebula. You should be able to see the cigar-shaped fuzz with a blob of brighter light at the centre. It's 23,700,000,000,000,000,000 km away and still 7 times the apparent diameter of the full moon, though you'd need a very dark sky to see that much. I stumbled across it when just about to give up looking for it for the tenth time (I'm not much good at this :rolleyes: ) and it just stopped me. Eerie kind of thing, it is, fuzzy and fairly undefined in my little 4-inch Lidl jobbie but no doubt about what it was. Kind of enjoyable seeing it in Stellarium when I came back inside. You should have a better view with your fancy one.

Linguo

Thanks both of you will defo give it another go....just have to wait for another clear night!!! Going to the west of Ireland later this year, really hoping the weather is good, the sky should be great there!

Flukey

If you are in a rural area, with not too much obscuring the sky, like trees or hills, you should be able to see some good stuff in the west of Ireland. Get studying the stars and sky now, so that you have a good idea of what to see and what you are seeing. Astronomy is simple, but fascinating. All you have to do is go outside and look up.