Today I bought a new telescope. Since it won't arrive for a couple of
days or so, and since my old telescope's mount is broken, I tried
using a good pair of binoculars tonight to track down some interesting
objects.
The Double Cluster in Perseus, M13, and M3 were secondary targets, but
I didn't see any of them. Venus was bright on the horizon, but there
was a lot of skyglow from the sun still, probably nautical twilight
even, so I couldn't see the Double Cluster. The view line to M13 was a
bit impeded, and I forgot about M3. So instead I went for my main
targets, M81 and M51.
M81 is Bode's Galaxy, and M51 is the Whirlpool Galaxy. I didn't have
very high expectations for seeing them through binoculars, and that's
just as well, because they don't call them faint fuzzies for nothing.
M51 was only-barely-possibly-maybe visible just-about, and the sky
around that area was difficult with no easy asterisms.
Spotting M81 was much easier though. At first I just used SkyVoyager
to check where to go. It's amazing how much easier SkyVoyager makes it
to find out where you're going. You can zoom and pan exactly where
you're tracing a sight line with binoculars, so if you want to see
more context or zoom in to a particular feature it's really easy, and
everything's always in appropriately rendered detail for the specific
zoom level. It's a bit like using a library just after they installed
an electronic catalogue, it's just so much easier.
The first easy asterism I found by Dubhe was the triangle formed by HR
4108, 32 UMa, and ET UMa. Then I went from the tip of that triangle
through its base to another kind of triangle, formed by HR 3838, d
UMa, and HD 82839. From this second triangle it was easy to trace a
line back from d UMa towards the first triangle to find Bode's Galaxy.
The galaxy at first was barely visible at all, to the extent where I
couldn't be sure that I could see it. I observed some other things,
and then checked again, and it was definitely visible but still very
dim. Then after more observations, about an hour in total, I could see
it quite clearly. It was still dim, and there was no discernible
structure, but a faint fuzzy patch was clearly there by that second
triangle.
Another great thing was looking at Mars and unexpectedly seeing M44,
the Beehive Cluster, right by it. The Beehive Cluster is really great
through binoculars, and Mars is looking a very strong and vivid red.
We're quite close to Mars at the moment, I think, but not in
opposition. Probably not bad viewing conditions, especially since it's
very high up in the sky.
I'm quite disappointed by the quality of the online sky map services,
especially sky-map.org and Google Sky. They're both really terrible
for e.g. checking what you've just been looking at through binoculars,
especially when compared to SkyVoyager. I suppose they're not really
intended as practical tools, but more for looking at interesting
images that other people have assembled.
Orion is setting quite early now, but just before it did I managed to
have a look at M42, which is a perennial favourite with amateur
astronomers. I've looked at it before, but it's always so tantalising
with its masses of structure.
Note that though I was looking at M81, I didn't really also try
looking for M82 which is very close by. It was difficult enough
spotting M81. People should start naming these little handy asterisms
for star hopping with binoculars, and making fun maps of them.