Deep-sky objects

Re: Easiest Messier Objects to Locate

brewers0048 — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:22:03 GMT

Wow, thanks a ton. I have a great night for viewing, so I will try to locate some of those.

Re: Easiest Messier Objects to Locate

DaveMitsky — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:13:01 GMT

At this time of year, the spring Messier galaxies and globular clusters are in prime position and the early summer objects are swinging into view. Some good targets are M3-M7, M10-M14, M51, M63-M66, M80-M87, M94, M97, M101 (requires dark skies) and M104-M106.

M3-M8, M13, M51, M65-M66, M81-M82, M101, and M104 are relatively easy to locate.

See http://www.webcam-astrophotography.com/data/messier-objects-magnitude.html for a list of the Messier objects sorted by magnitude.

Star-hops are posted at http://education.gsu.edu/spehar/FOCUS/Astronomy/star-hop/Monthly/index.htm

Messier Telrad charts are available at http://www.atmob.org/library/member/skymaps_jsmall.html and http://www.utahskies.org/deepsky/messier/charts/messierTelradFrameSet.html

Dave Mitsky

Easiest Messier Objects to Locate

brewers0048 — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:04:10 GMT

Hey everybody, I'm pretty new to this whole thing, so I was wondering if somebody could put together a list of the more easy Messier objects to find. I usually have pretty dark skies as I'm not in a very big city. I have an Orion xt8 with just a 25mm eyepiece right now. Thanks for any help!