On 5/12/10 09:51 , bpnjensen wrote:

In amateur astronomy, we have two kinds of observers -

Those who use a PC "go-to" to find and locate every faint galaxy
to look at - and then sometimes they can see it and sometimes
not, because they do not train themselves to hunt and then locate
and observe; and

Those who do it the old fashioned way by using star charts and
the Mark I eyeball method - and then usually they see it. It
takes longer, but we usually bag our quarry, and the reward
tastes just a bit sweeter...

I am not sure if this applies to what you're doing or not - but
I surely enjoy the hunt and identification.

Bruce



Funny you should mention this....The NexStar by Celestron all have
computerized motor drives that locate from a database with a couple
of button presses. I was looking at the new scopes with my g/f (who
is also a stargazer), recently, and she said, "doesn't this depend
on whether the mount is set up correctly?"

Why, yes. Yes, it does.

Further, it takes exactly the same skills, and knowledge to set up
the mount as it does to hunt the sky using charts and a timepiece.

When I set up my C8 (Starbright) in the deep weeds, away from
urban light pollution, there is, indeed, a sense of discovery, and
capture, when I find a deep sky object using simple math, and basic
charts. More importantly, and this applies to a lot of technology
driven activities, today, when the technology fails, no matter the
reason, I can still soldier on, having fun getting it done, with no
more difficulty than simply opening a chart.