About viewing planetary nebulas.

[nubeoort]

Hi,

In northern hemisphere we are in summer, for summer holidays I go to a place with "decent" skies.

The place has a visual limiting magnitude about 5 - 5.2, in the worst days 4.8, in the best days maybe 5.3, in short about 5 - 5.2. Also is 19.2 mag. x arcsec2

In short: is a medium-decent place for see the stars. For imagine the place: I can see the Milky Way, more in the zenit.

As I said, I will go with my pair of binoculars, exactly 20x50.


I want to know if it's possible to see planetary nebulas with this sky and with this pair of binoculars.


With Planetary nebulas, I say: NGC 6828 (blinking nebula), M27 (dumbell), M57 (ring nebula), Helix Nebula, Saturn Nebula, Eye Cat Nebula (NGC 6543)...


I think there aren't so much options with the sky I said, but I want opinions, opinions of the people that knows a lot.

[Tinaa]

I've moved your thread over here to the astronomical observing section.

[RickJ]

Helix yes (if high enough) as it is half the diameter of a full moon but will be very faint. M27 will be a small faint smudge. The others will be hard to tell from faint stars. Be sure to use a tripod or other support for the binoculars. Trying to see stuff this hard hand held at 20x is very difficult. You need a very steady image to see the fainter ones. Don't expect detail in any of them. Those bright enough for much detail at all are too small and the larger ones are so faint detail is difficult. The hole in the center of the Helix might be seen as a darker area in the circular patch.

Without your location I don't know if the Helix will be too low or not. Where I live at 47N it is pretty well lost in the gunk at the horizon to binoculars though at 30N it is very easy. If you can't see the Sagittarius Milky Way easily it might be too low for your skies. Catch it when near the meridian for the best chance.

There are many star clusters that would make far better targets for those binoculars. They too, need a good support to see well in binoculars.

Rick