HOW TO LOCATE AND OBSERVE M3 

Thank you. I appreciate your kind comment. Thank you for supporting my little channel.

Thank you and peace to you as well.

Thank you. That is so kind of you to say. You made my day.

Thank you. Thanks for watching.

Hello to Bogota and thank you very much!

Thank you, Linda. It makes me feel good to know I am inspiring someone to get out there. Thank you and I hope the clouds clear for you soon.

Thank you and I agree!

When compared to m15, m22, m5 and omega centauri, not to mention m13 and m92, I think m3 ranks the lowest. However, M3 is the first globular cluster to rise. The one we settle for while waiting for the time that m13 is high in the sky. M5 has a nice granular quality, m22 is just massive, easy to resolve in smaller scopes, and m15 is just plain amazing in a 10" or larger at high magnification. Omega centauri is spectacular, but that isn't happening in Montana, and probably not in Northern CA either. The first time I saw omega centauri, about 20 years ago, I just happened to stumble across it on one of my early observation sessions when 15x70 binoculars on a tripod was my main instrument and I would head to areas along the coast to look put over the pacific because there was no light coming from out there, and one spring night while looking low along the horizon I saw thus big mostly circular haze. I didn't know that's what it was because it didn't quite resolve into stars at 15x and my eyes were not yet very experienced, I thought it was probably an edge on spiral galaxy, since the globulars I usually hunted in the binoculars were all much more compact and more like a little snowball. I would usually go up to turnouts on the Ortega highway in those early sessions. By the time I got a telescope I knew were a lot of things were in the sky. In general, globular clusters are my favorite type of objects, but I don't spend a ton of time on m79 in the winter, with all the stuff in orion and Auriga to look at, but when I had my c11, m79 was still better than no globular to look at.

Thank you. I'm glad you like them.

Thank you so much!

I was amazed to learn that M3 has more stars than M13 but M3 is still very impressive.

@@tsulasbigadventures yes but bit futher that why its bit dimmer cheers still get GC

Yes! Well said.

Thanks, Ron. By the way, is your goto Dob a Skywatcher? A guy was selling a goto 12" Dob on Craig's List and I seriously considered it but it weighs 100 pounds fully assembled and I really questioned whether or how long I would be willing to lift that much into my car.

@@tsulasbigadventures Yes, it is a Skywatcher with GOTO. It is quite heavy with the base. The scope itself is not that heavy.

Thank you! I wasn't familiar with that telescope. So, I had to look it up. Looks nice. Does having a split tube mean you have to collimate more often or it doesn't matter?

It holds collimation very well and only a few minutes to do it before observing. High magnifications are not a problem. I wondered before buying it and read that several cloudy nights users say it holds very well. The original mount is smooth but not rock solid so modifications would be necessary. I was lucky to buy it on Cloudy Nights classifieds showing a second homemade mount with the scope that was superior in every way. I would have still purchased it with just the original mount since I could make some mods to stiffen the mount easily. I also installed DSC but most sessions I try to locate the objects since it’s so very rewarding. The 5 spaced out 100 degree Ethos eyepieces I have is a blessing on my un driven telescope. I could only purchase them one at a time since they are expensive. Clear sky’s:)

@@jeffrystehle3960 OK. It sounds like a nice purchase then. I know what you mean about those Ethos eyepieces. They make finding the target a lot easier but they are very expensive. My 10mm Ethos was stolen and I have not replaced it yet. Clear skies to you too.

I'm not familiar with it. Is it something that you add to your telescope? Or you use it in some other way?

Thank you!

Good job on resolving stars with an 80mm refractor in a Bortle 7. Not bad. Such a beautiful object to observe.

@@tsulasbigadventures I owe it to the quality glass in these old Japanese refractors.

Thank you and hello all the way to Chile. I've never seen Omega Centauri but if it fills the entire field of view it sounds like something I should seek out one day. And I agree with you that globular clusters look even better in the eyepiece than a photo.

Thank you. Thanks for watching.

Thanks, Greg. I bought that 102mm a long time ago and wasn't using it much after I got the 203mm SCT. But lately I have been using it a lot more. It works great for looking at the sun with my Quark and for viewing large DSOs that don't fit well in the SCT. Your poor Dob is in the forbidden closet!!! Get that thing out!

The more I read about Messier, the more I suspect he just missed things through being a bit slapdash about observing generally.

@@barthvapour He was mostly interested in comets. He was famous for it - the French king had praised him as "ferret of comets" - and his interest in astronomy had been sparked by seeing a naked-eye one. But his catalogue, despite its careful drawing of the Orion nebula, certainly has an odd construction, with experts asking why he included, for example, the Pleiades. On the other hand, he observed M3 more than once (with his achromatic refractor - that seems clear from the notes in the catalogue) and said it was "always very beautiful." So who knows?

Hello: Congratulations on your first telescope. 8" Newtonian was an excellent choice. I know exactly what you mean about having to get your eye at the exact right location to even see out of those eyepieces. Some are better than others but from my experience all those wide field of view eyepieces have that same issue. I think it's just the tradeoff for getting those incredible wide field of views. It has to do with the wide field of view and not the focal length though the shorter focal length ones do seems harder especially when you are at those high magnifications. Your other issue about sensing the secondary mirror I don't think I have ever experienced. Does this only occur with that particular eyepiece? I am not sure what to tell you about that issue but as for lining up your eye precisely it gets easier the more you use the eyepiece and to me personally I just love having the giant field of view and so I just put up with the annoying matter of getting my eye lined up precisely. It's much easier to line up your eye on the longer focal length eyepieces. I have a 36mm Baader that has a 76 degree FOV and that is my goto eyepiece and it's not hard to line up my eye on it. But as you go to the higher magnifications it gets harder.

@@tsulasbigadventures Thank you, Tsula :) That is nice to know when I am looking for the next eyepiece. Eyepieces are awesome and I now understand why so many describe them as personal. I have the Panoptic 24mm in sight, but not until the nights get dark again. I live in Greenland so the nights don’t get dark at all, so I only have the moon and the sun for now. In fact we couldn’t see the big show of northern lights this weekend. But luckily we can see them all winter :)

@@RU-vidr-ku4nk You're welcome. I was thinking about whether the aurora could be seen in Alaska. I went to Fairbanks in January to see the aurora but the aurora season ends there in April because the sun barely sets. I own a panoptic 24mm that I use on my 10" Dobsonian. That is a great eyepiece. Good luck to you.