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My neighbor swore I'd see Andromeda with plain 10x50 binos from my driveway, and he was dead wrong
Last Friday he came over with his old 10x50s and said I didn't even need a scope, just lay on the driveway and look up near the Cassiopeia V. I spent 40 minutes on a lawn chair in my Bortle 7 backyard and got nothing but a faint gray smudge I probably imagined. He lives 15 miles out past the edge of town, which is the part he left out of his helpful little speech. So now I'm weighing a trip to a darker spot or just buying a cheap used 6 inch dob, and I'd rather hear what worked for you guys first. Anybody here actually bag Andromeda from a bright suburb, and if so with what?
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john_singh19h ago
Heard a guy on a podcast say he caught it from a Bortle 8 zone with 10x50s, but he had to use averted vision and tap the binos while staring just off to the side of where he thought it was. The trick was knowing exactly where to look, like the star hop from Mirach to Mu Andromedae to Nu Andromedae, then the smudge sits just past Nu. Said it looked like a thumbprint on a dirty window, not much more. From your spot that faint gray smudge was probably the real thing, honestly. A 6 inch dob would pull it in better but a dark site trip would beat both by a mile.
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