Turn Left at Orion: Hundreds of Night Sky Objects to See in a Home Telescope – and How to Find Them

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There is no CCD in Turn Left at Orion. The telescope you own, up to four inches in aperture, is guided by your hands and you see your way about the marvels of the night sky via the finderscope attached to your telescope proper. In this book the authors show you how to know where to find and where to look for whatever you can find within the range of the light gathering capabilities of your scope as you direct it to your eye. There are lots of astronomical objects to see, say, two thousand readily available out there per night but 1,900 could very well be boring. So what's to see as you go for doubles, galaxies, variables, nebulae, clusters, the Moon, and the planets? Follow their directions for the sky, finderscope, and in your eyepiece. There is also timely information about each class of objects and many single objects have extended accounts of their history and appearance. Current astronomical knowledge is brought in as appropriate.

Turn Left at Orion: Hundreds of Night Sky Objects to See in a Home Telescope ? and How to Find Them I have the book and tried to read through it from cover to cover but I just can't do it. I lose interest. How exactly do those of you that love this book use it? I closed this book out with some beautiful viewing this morning around 4am, where the chilly 24 degree F temps made for a crystal clear sky. A great way to celebrate the finale of this book. Turn Left At Orion: Hundreds Of Night Sky Objects To See In A Home Telescope, And How To Find Them [PDF] The first views you will have of the planets, conditioned as we are to the necessities of NASA's photos as fulfilling a need to impress the taxpayers, are going to be disappointing. You will need patience, perceptive skill, your highest magnification at the scope, and a night conductive to good seeing. Be prepared to at first see a tiny trembling blob of light. Any expectation of awesome fine detail to be seen on a planet's surface is greatly diminished. It is there, some important features can be see. It takes training, training takes time. Venus - its phases. Mars - tiny with dark patches and polar caps. Jupiter - zones, belts, festoons, the Great Red Spot, and Jup's moons. Saturn - its rings, Cassini's division in those rings, and Saturn's largest moon, Titan.What a wonderful book for some introductory education on viewing the night sky! I must say I learned a great deal and will continue to reference this book during my nocturnal adventures gazing into the heavens. Once seen, whatever it is, are you done? How about a different filter? A different altitude or attitude? Different eyepieces, different magnification, collimation, new seasons, new hours of the night, differing temperature, the mud of spring or the frost of autumn, and a differing time of your life? You ultimately see with your mind. How have you changed? What you see will then change. The secrets of the starry night change too. I have both the first and second editions. The 2nd is spiral-bound (good), but HUGE, even larger than coffee table-sized books (not so good, unless one has a large table to put it on while observing). I typically recommend the first edition, if one can find it, although that is likely because that's the one I first got and used. The second is updated and expanded, including far more southern sky objects, and is definitely worthwhile in its own right.

Someday the scopes can be talked to and they will go where wanted to find what can be seen. But, by then, why bother to look? Let the scope tell you what can be seen and push out a super DVD, color corrected, blown up to gigantic screen size as you sit and impatiently for the scope to get on with it, there are those other 55 tonight and you have only 19 minutes more. The scope knows the sky conditions, the temp, does autofocus, knows what you had for dinner, and it knows if your toenails need to be trimmed. You can on this job, if you insist in getting into such a state, be as emotional as you want. "No detector matches the human eye in capturing subtlety and emotion. No computer guider can give you the serendipity of the things seen on the way to the things sought." The example pictures are excellent for both encouragement ("wow, I'll be able to see all that?") and for helping one find the objects.After delving into how to use a telescope, the book teaches how to locate specific objects in the night sky, and how to use a telescope to see the Moon, planets, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies. It even talks about how to locate and utilize geostationary satellites. TURN LEFT" (not the unrelated "Turn right" incarnation) embraces close to 500 celestial objects. It takes the approach of identifying a primary object such as the Orion Nebula (M42) then hops to other stuff in its locality; like M43; NGC 1980; NGC1981; the Trapesium; multiple star systems, Sigma Orionis, Striven 761; then examines doubles and individual stars. It's pretty comprehensive and ideal way of exploring the treasures of specific constellations. I wanted to know if anyone has recommendations for a really good pdf or ebook for new comer to astronomy, star hopping and telescopes? I just don't like hard cover/physical books. Would like something electronic. Free is a nice bonus too. In Turn Left at Orion, Guy Consolmagno and Dan M. Davis are of the opinion that amateur astronomy is not made up of GOTO telescopes and CCD apparatus. With GOTO scopes, a computer finds the celestial object for you by knowing where the object is and by how much to move the telescope until the object is seen in the eyepiece of the scope. You are a low-level operator, you sit in the stands, and the computer plays the game. No virtues are instilled. A CCD (charged coupled device) digitizes an image of the astronomical beauty and you, again as an operator, see what it sees for you. A machine in each case is doing it for you. This book is great when combined with WiFi and SkySafari Plus (or Pro). You use a "pinch" technique to open up your on-screen path to GoTo the additional objects from the primary. If accurately aligned (I use Starsense) you don't need to fiddle with HC slews as GoTo each is precise. However SkySafari descriptions tend to illustrate Hubble type images; when "Turn left at Orion" highlights exactly what you are actually likely to see in various scopes. It completely transformed my expectation, but is perhaps of higher value to those with larger scopes (6" and above) as many of the objects will be tiny blurred smoky blobs in lesser scopes (as they are in reality). Most owners love it.

I see TLAO as my go-to book for observing. As a relative novice, it has great information and does a first rate job of setting the right expectations of the view at the EP. This book is great for solving this beginners problems by help the user find the most interesting things in the sky for every season.

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The book is much larger than I imagined and ring-bound; great for the field, not ideal for the tube. Praise for previous editions:‘This is quite possibly the most inviting guidebook ever written to help people with binoculars and small telescopes find, view, understand, and most of all, enjoy everything in the night sky from the Moon and planets to distant star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. And if you think it's only for beginners, think again - every telescope owner should have a copy.' Dennis Di Cicco, Senior Editor, Sky & Telescope Another shout-out for Turn Left at Orion. It revolutionized my star hopping, enabling me to find scores of objects I had not been able to before (both in the book and beyond). It also contains solid scientific information behind what you're seeing so, in that regard, it's a good introduction to the field of astronomy, too! Turn Left at Orion : Hundreds of Night Sky Objects to See in a Home Telescope - and How to Find Them Your post has me wondering if you are confused, and your info is flat out incorrect as mentioned by others. Only two looks in 6 years is not giving this book a fair shake, but that's just my opinion and to eachtheir own as you found what works best for you.