Spent 3 hours trying to find the Andromeda galaxy with just binoculars

I was in my yard in Phoenix, using a basic star chart and 10x50 binoculars, but kept looking at the wrong spot near Cassiopeia. It finally clicked when I realized I was a full fist-width off from the right star. How do you guys actually star-hop to faint objects without getting lost?

3 comments

3 Comments

martin.jamie2mo agoMost Upvoted

Man, I once spent a whole night looking at a fuzzy star cluster thinking it was a galaxy.

mia_park2mo ago

That fuzzy star cluster thing happened to me with a satellite once.

theas9422d ago

Oh man, I had the exact same thing happen with a bright fuzzy blob I kept seeing in the same spot. I was convinced it was some distant galaxy or nebula until my friend who actually knows astronomy looked and was like "nope, that's just Jupiter doing its thing." What finally worked for me was downloading one of those free star map apps on my phone. SkyView or something like that, I can't remember the exact name. You point it at the sky and it labels everything for you, super easy. It finally confirmed I'd been looking at a planet and not some cool deep space object for weeks.