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[jeremy]

Had some clear weather last night, so I decided to practice finding Messier objects without the help of my push-to computer. As I'm downtown, star hopping is a little bit trickier, but last night was a great confidence boosting session as I was able to find every object I was looking for.

First I started off by determining viewable areas against my star maps with my different levels of magnification, so I could validate exactly what I should be seeing through eyepieces. I started with my finder scope, and worked my way down to my 8mm. Once I had all that dialed in, star hopping was not too bad and I started getting quicker and quicker each object I was looking for.

As I am downtown, I limited my viewing to +7 magnitude or brighter objects, which generally were open clusters last night. I even tried finding the comet Gerradd in Ursa Minor, but there was a pretty good light wash going on that prevented me from seeing it. I am confident I was in the right place, just washed out.

Last night was a big step off push-to dependency! Am happy I took the time to focus just on star hopping, and finding objects.

[erikruud]

Congratulations!

I have also been learning to find things without help so I know how it feels to be able to look up and find things.

[Paulie pchris00]

The brightest Messiers are visible to the naked eye in a dark enough sky, while quite a few others pop with just a few times magnification with a limiting magnitude of 4 or better. M22, M31, M16, M13 come to mind, among others. This is how I learned to find deep sky objects here in the Hoosier suburbs. That was fine for awhile, but it limited my viewing. I had to learn to starhop. Even then, though, I found myself looking for a faint fuzzy patch in the finder scope at the end of the starhop. I didn't truly learn to read a star atlas and starhop until I started using the 16" scope at Conway.

With such a large aperture telescope at my disposal, I could look for objects far too faint for my 6" Dob. The LX200 was supposed to be a go-to scope, but for some reason, it's not. I had to learn, to a certain extent at least, to use my star atlas. I had to be able to differentiate between stellar magnitudes, and apparent distances between stars. I learned to starhop.

Starhopping is a great skill to have. In any clear sky, with any telescope, you can find any object within reach of your aperture and limiting magnitude. Congrats. I struggle at starhopping in the city, but it's usually under the direct glare of streetlights, with an audience waiting for something to see. With time, out of the direct glare of nearby lighting, I think I could find quite a bit even in a brightly light polluted sky.