Amateur astronomers

[Illuminatus]

Any other amateur astronomers out there? Want to help a friend in need? Okay, here's my problem. I can't find anything with my scope. (3" Orion reflector) It's not a matter of knowing the constellations, or reading charts, because I can do that with no problem. But when I'm behind my eyepiece, looking for objects, I just can't pick them up. It's not problems with light pollution, (avg. visual mag is around 3.5-4), it's probably related to how I can't navigate with a map, either.

So, any tips from other astronomers? How do you find things?

 

[Stellar Vision]

Ah the joys of hunting for deep-sky objects. A couple of tips that I can think of:



- Low magnification. The higher you go the dimmer the view. A rule of thumb is that the HIGHEST useful magnification is around 50x per inch of aperture. So that would be about 150x for your 3in. scope, but that's the maximum; try around 100x. Look for the bigger eyepieces that read 24mm and up. You calculate magnification by dividing the scope's focal length over the eyepiece's focal length.

Interestingly I was at a sporting goods store the other day and was playing around with a small pair of quick zoom binoculars. The image became considerably darker the further I zoomed in. This is also what happens with telescopes when you change their magnification too.


- Also aim for at least moderate quality ep's. If you have some real basic ones that came with the scope like I do more than likely you will not get as sharp an image using those and thus will not be able to detect any faint deep-sky objects. I found a 3-pack of meade ep's at Wolf Camera for about $40. Nothing fancy, but definitely better than the one's that came with my scope.


- Make sure you've given you eyes about 20 minutes to become well adjusted to the dark. Try a couple minutes of pitch black just to be sure. Go in the bathroom or closet and shut the door or wear one of those sleep masks. Of course be careful not to look at any bright lights after you've done this.


- Almost forgot one of the most important techniques for detecting faint objects. Averted vision. That's where you don't look directly at the object in your eyepiece, but just slightly off to the side. This is because your eye contains more rods in the outer region of the retina. As you probably already know rods and cones are two types of sensors on the retina. Cones pick up color and are located at the center of the retina; however, rods are more sensitive and more numerous, but they can't detect color and are not very dense at the center.


That's all I can come up with at the moment. I haven't really been doing much observing lately so feel free to correct any inaccuracies.