Re: Starhopping, star-strolling, and star-drifting?

On Sep 4, 10:14 am, "Steve Paul" <smarshallp...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

IIRC, it was Sketcher who once defined his favorite method as PAL (Point and
Look).

You recall correctly! I'm (pleasantly) surprised that anyone
remembered! The PAL method works best in conjunction with a dark sky
and a 1x finder such as any red-dot finder. One basically commits to
short-term memory the location of M1 (or any other object) relative to
the naked eye stars in a magnitude 6.5 (near enough to my typical
naked-eye limit) atlas. One then finds the same star pattern in the
sky (some familiarity with the constellations is presumed) and plant
the red dot exactly on M1's memorized position. For the final step
one simply looks into the primary telescope's low-power, wide-angle
eyepiece and viola! There's M1 staring right back at you! (With hand-
held binoculars one can do this without the aid of a finder).

The PAL method fails when there's a multitude of faint galaxies (etc.)
within a *small* area of sky. In such crowded situations I often
resort to a detailed atlas (such as the Millennium Star Atlas) and use
a low-powered, wide-field eyepiece with a known true FOV (information
that any halfway serious observer ought to have measured and
recorded). With these tools in hand it's easy to use the primary
telescope (or for really large telescopes -- the magnifying finder) to
match the star patterns in the atlas with those seen through the
telescope -- with due regard to "correct" image orientation in the
finder and primary telescope. (A 90-degree, erect-image diagonal
works well with refractors. Many of the 45 degree, erect-image
diagonals tend to be too poor in the quality department). I've
navigated in this manner with refractors as well as with reflectors.
Of course, computer generated charts can be substituted for
commercially printed atlas charts.

I've experimented a bit with scanning regions of sky one square degree
at a time using an eyepiece that has a one-square-degree field (thanks
to a homemade, square fieldstop), the Millennium Atlas (with lines of
constant declination plotted for every degree of declination) and an
equatorial mount (allowing the scope to smoothly move along the lines
of constant declination. Of course, one adjusts the eyepiece so that
one pair of sides of the square field stop run parallel to the lines
of constant declination. Such an arrangement works very nicely if one
is interested in scanning the night sky via telescope one atlas page
at a time.

Then there are methods of pointing a telescope (or mounted binoculars)
at a star, comet or planet in the daytime sky utilizing a simple, non-
computerized, alt-az mount (It *can* be done. I've done it for stars,
planets and even for one daytime comet).

There are numerous methods that can be used by the creative amateur.
In the end, it's a situation of "whatever works for you".

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.
http://cejour.blogspot.com
http://www.rangeweb.net/~sketcher

.

Relevant Pages

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