Tip & How-To about Optics
Those are OBJECTS in the sky that you can try to find and observe!
"M" objects- this is the Charles Messier catalog containing over 100 sky objects he discovered in the 17th century!
http://seds.org/MESSIER/
"NGC" objects- this is the New General Catalog by J.L.E.Dreyer produced in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It has over 7000 sky objects that you can observe. Some of these are very dim and only possible to see in larger telescopes or from a dark sky observing site.
http://seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.html
"IC" - this is the later Index Catalog produced by Dreyer
http://seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.html Same web site
There are dozens of other sky catalogs! My computer GOTO telescope lists 30,000 objects in it's internal database.
Here is a very good star chart:
http://www.astronomics.com/main/product.asp/catalog_name/Astronomics/category_name/K4W97T8RTUVV8JGMKNF6RJ6P33/product_id/A9556
And here is a free monthly star chart:
www.skymaps.com
I would also recommend that you download the free planetarium software Stellarium, install it on your computer, put in your location; and it will show you the sky for any time or date. The graphics of the sky on this free program are VERY good.
Another good FREE computer star chart is Cartes du Ciel. The free download is available here:
http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/
Clear Skies!
Joe
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