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Rich N
Post Laureate
Reged: 09/22/04
Posts: 5351
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area, Calif...
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Re: Never seen M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) in binocular
05/25/08 01:54 PM
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M51 is esay to see in binoculars, however if you are looking through high, thin clouds, M51 may get lost in the sky glow. It helps to have relatively transparent skies so that you have good contrast between the background sky and M51.
If you are using binoculars with a field of view roughly like the detailed star chart above, you will see M51 much like it is in the drawing but the cores are less clear. If you took that drawing and simply reduced the brightnes of the two cores you would have a pretty accurate picture of M51 through a hand held binocular.
Through a telescope, using a bit more power and more aperture, the cores of the two galaxies stand out much more than in the low power view through a binocular.
In the Summer, in the SF Bay Area we often have nice tranparency once we get above the low marine layer. This means getting up into the hills that ring the bay.
Good luck,
Rich
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