Five things you can see in UK dark night skies with modest telescopes
You don’t need a giant telescope to see many of the most beautiful objects in the night sky from a dark place. The positions in the sky of these “deep-sky” wonders can be found online, on free programs such as Stellarium and star finder apps on mobile devices. There are also excellent star atlases suitable for beginners such as Norton’s Star Atlas and Turn Left at Orion.
M13 – Hercules Cluster
This is a noble globular cluster on the edge of the little “Keystone” asterism in Hercules. A telescope will show hundreds of stars.
M42 – Orion Nebula
The Orion Nebula is a fabulous sight through a telescope, looking like a fan-shaped cloud in space, but don’t expect to see the wonderful colours as captured by a camera. M42 looks greyish green in most decent telescopes.
M57 – The Ring Nebula
This little ‘smoke ring’ in the constellation of Lyra is the Ring Nebula, remnant of a star that exploded long ago. Spot the little galaxy towards the top right. It’s 680 million light years away!
M44 – Beehive Cluster
This little bunch of stars in Cancer is sometimes known as the “Beehive Cluster”, with hundreds of members. It will almost fill the telescope field.
M35
This is one of the best winter star clusters, like strings of sparkling diamonds down by the left foot of the heavenly twin Castor in Gemini.