Hunting galaxies in Leo the Lion

Sierra Vista Herald ^ | Ted Forte

[hopespringseternal]

It depends. My personal preference is for a 12” or larger telescope. But you are talking about something that isn’t easily mobile, and will cost over $1000. But you will see something other than a smudge when looking in the eyepiece.

Having said that, it is hard to locate anything in the night sky to look at. I have seen people buy great telescopes and give up because they had no idea where to point it. You can get a telescope that finds and tracks objects, but it is more money and more complex.

10 X 50 binoculars are not a bad bet because they can be had for less than $50 and have a wide enough field to actually find something. Next up from there would be a six or eight inch telescope for $250 to $350, but again, your biggest challenge will be finding something. Don’t bother with a 60mm refractor like you see around Christmas, it is a waste of time for anything other than the moon and maybe Saturn.

But if you live in the city and don’t want to drive a couple of hours, forget it. Every moron in the world is buying lights and turning them on while they go to sleep. There is no more night sky withing 70 miles of any largish city, and you really need to drive about ten times that distance to see what your grandfather saw.

[jeffc]

Wow! Thanks all. Good info to digest!

[SandRat]

That’s a suggestion for a enronmental cause. LIGHT POLLUTION!

[P.O.E.]

Leo DeLyon?

[Conan the Librarian]

I personally prefer paper charts (or at least PDF on my tablet) to using electronic anything, but, my new-to-me scope has Sky Commander Digital setting circles, and a blu-ray connection to Sky-Safari 5 on my tablet. It also has a Tel-rad instead of a proper finder, something I hope to fix soon.

If all is working right, I can either look up items on the sky commander and it will tell me where to point, or, I can use the tablet to find an item and point the scope. I mostly use it to tell me what I am looking at.

I can find 95% of the Messier objects by memory, it’s the NGC objects I can’t remember too well.

If you are going to have one app for astronomy, Sky Safari is the best by a LONG shot.

[Conan the Librarian]

My drive is 54 miles.

There are lots of things to see even in an Urban setting.

I am part of the “Urban Astronomy Club” run by the Astronomical League. It requires you to find (no go-to or digital setting circles) 100 objects from a specific list. It includes brighter galaxies in Virgo, so, it can be a challenge.

I did this with a 10” Meade from my front and back yard when we lived in the middle of Savannah, Ga. Not a large urban area, but, within a couple of miles of the downtown area, two hospitals, and a shopping district. I also could count 17 streetlights from my back door. I was lucky to have a small patch that I could set up in that was shaded by trees, though I did have to block one with a beach umbrella on a poll.

I ALWAYS tell folks just starting to get those 10x50 binoculars and go out and learn the sky. If you like it, then get a good scope. If not, then, you still have a great pair of binoculars for use for other things.

Another good idea is to look around for a local Astronomy Club too. Get them to let you look through the different scopes they have and it may help you decide.