July 2012

This the third in a series of tutorials intended to develop basic star-hopping skills. The focus of these tutorials is not on finding particular deep sky objects, but rather on using hops to selected objects as a vehicle for illustrating star-hopping techniques.

This lesson introduces star-skipping—a way to skip across large areas either to speed up a long-range star-hop or to get across areas that lack stars suitable for traditional star-to-star star-hopping. The star-hop from Altair to M11 provides a perfect example of where this technique can be useful. Altair itself is bright enough to be visible even in heavily light-polluted skies. But light pollution combined with summer haze and M11's somewhat low position on the horizon often leaves few other stars visible for star-to-star hopping. The best way to get from Altair to M11 is to “skip across” such barren areas to the brighter stars...

Other tutorials in the series: Lesson 1, Lesson 2