What does it look like?

I was trying to find M57 on Saturday night. The seeing wasn't the best but the observing challenge handbook did say any sky I failed miserably however due to my lack of ... well ... brains

Now I am a complete newbie so this may seem like a bit of a daft question. The first image below is Lyra as seen with the naked eye.


So what should it look like through a telescope? It is mirrored and flipped? Just mirrored or flipped? I found it hard enough to try and ignore the extra stars I could see through the scope without knowing what exactly it was I was looking for . Here's three option .. which one is right?



Thanks guys.

Steve,

Depends on what scope you have? Also remember you are never going to see the entire constellation of lyra through your scope but only a tiny part of it. If you mean through your finderscope it again depends on whether it is a 'straight through' finder or has a diaganol mirror inside it.

The best way is to test your setup yourself. Thereis an easy way to do this; find a bright star in your finder (or scope if thats what you are testing), now move the scope a little left and see which way the star moves in the scope/finder. If it moves right the the setup is mirrored. If if moves left too then its not mirrored. If the setup is mirrored horizontally then it is mirrored vertically too.

Heres how I find stuff using a celestron 98x50 finder.
First make sure your finder is aligned correctly. Find a bright star with or without the finder. Once you have the bright star centered in your scope, align the cross hairs of the finder on it. Then check the object is still centered. If not, center it again and then keep fine tuning the finder until you are sure they are both aligned.

You should check this every time you go out, in case you knocked out the alignment when you were setting up. If you collimate your telescope you will also need to re-align the finder.

Now onto finding stuff.

Heres how I do it, lets use M57 as an example. A star map will tell you that M57 is pretty much exactly half way between the bottom two stars of the parallelogram made up by four of the main stars of the constellation (beta and gamma lyrae). Now heres the trick I use. Use BOTH eyes when looking through the finder. (i.e. dont close the eye your not looking through). This gives a kind of strange effect. You're looking through thefinder with one eye and looking at the sky with the other. Now line up the finder with the bottom two stars by moving the scope closer and closer until the images in both eyes converge. Its kinda hard to explain what it looks like, but you'll know when you've done this for sure. Once you have confirmed the two target stars in the finder, move the cross hairs exactly half way between them. Pop a low power eyepiece into the scope and you can be fairly certain that M57 will be there. You can the center the object in the scope and use higher power eyepieces if you like.

GOLDEN RULE NO1; NEVER try to find an object with anything other that your lowest power eyepiece. I have a 32mm plossl which I ALWAYS use for finding things.

Once you got the hang of this with M57 try for other objects. Pretty quickly you will figure out your own best method for each object. i.e. what star pattern to use for the 'two eye' method and then where to center the crosshairs once you have acquired the target star(s).

This is the method which works best for me. Take your time, practice and before you know it you'll get the hang of it.

BTW Steve, what part of the country are you in? I'm sure wherever you are somebody from these boards will not be too far away. Perhaps you should get together with somebody for an observing session. You can learn a lot that way.

Steve, The first picture is the right way when you look at lyra with the naked eye

Keith..

Hi Steve,

I like the comments made by Dave in relation to your query. Aside from having a low-power eyepiece to start with, point your finderscope at the top of the two stars which form the lower/rightmost edge of the parallelogram. Then, while looking through the eyepiece, carefully and slowly move the scope downwards (physically) so that you will be approaching the lower of the two stars. Once you see the lower star, sweep very slightly to the right (physically) and slowly go back up again towards the first star. At that point you should encounter M57.

You cannot miss it ... it really stands out like a puff of smoke and is truly impressive! I try and avoid converting the actual physical view into left-right/right-side-up-upside-down logic since it is very confusing and it depends on the scope you have and whether a diagonal is in use etc etc. Too much trouble with little to no gain.

Anthony.

Thanks guys - particularly keith (you really cleared that up for me ) Never thought of that simple test to see what it should look like :oops: I was aware that I wouldn't get all of Lyra in the FOV but wasn't sure what exactly I was looking for.

btw - I have a Skywatcher 200 NR scope and I'm pretty sure the 9*50 finder is straight through. And I'm in Maynooth. Dave McD lives fairly close to me - I was over in his garden last week. I think KAS might be having an observing night soon which I'll try and make.

Dave, that sounds quite strange - I'll give it a try. Maybe this evening if it's clear. Anthony, thanks for the comments too - they'll be a help as well. I know all this is easy for you guys but this is my first attempt at trying to find a Messier object so it's gonna take me a while for all this to become second nature