Cassiopeia

The rain and clouds finally lifted for a couple of hours last night so I got out for a spot of stargazing. My plan for the short time I had before it was due to rain again was to use the October edition of the Sky at Night Magazine and use its Deep-Sky observing challenge to see some interesting sights. Instead of going all over the sky I thought I would just stick around one constellation. I thought this would be the best idea as the theory was it would help me become more familiar with the stars around that part of the sky and would therefore help make finding objects easier. This didn't go according to plan. I should have known when I saw the stars twinkling when I set up that it was going to be a difficult time.

Cassiopeia itself is an easy constellation to find for my as it is one of those that are close to Polaris so will always be accessible from my garden.

There were a number of objects I was interested in seeing. I spent a long time trying to find M52, then tried NGC 457 (The Owl Cluster), then tried to find NGC 7789. I failed with all of these. A significant problem I have come up with is that all the books and charts show simple targets but once I have pointed my telescope in the general direction or if I try to star hop I just cannot locate the object in question unless I have been particularly lucky and it immediately appears in my eyepiece. All of these objects looked simple to find using steps from the main constellation stars, but I just couldn't see any of them. The vast number of stars I can see through my scope compared to what I can see with the naked eye makes star hopping very difficult for me. I also have yet to work out how much of the sky I can actually see through my eyepieces which makes it difficult to know how far to move to reach my targets.

I will try again next time the skies are clear!