Star hopping and learning the sky is a must , books and atlases are important for projects and learning astronomy , burhams celestiel hand books are excellent for learning all about astronomy and history and legends about the stars and constelations , his books can be found in digital form , good show👍

Excellent episode. I have used the same process outlined here since starting to observe last summer. It just felt like the logical thing to do. I do have an admission to make. I enjoy star hopping as much as finally looking at the target object. Last summer I was looking around Cygnus for something and I 'discovered' the Veil Nebula West by chance. I will remember that moment forever. That wouldn't happen with a GoTo. Push a button and observe an object with no context whatsoever sounds pretty boring to me. It is like those travel agencies that drop you in a hotel in the middle of nowhere and then you spend a week inside the hotel. Sure it is 5* but you learn nothing of the local culture and miss on a ton of experiences. I think the reason most people don't do it is because they are missing a nice 2" 40mm eyepiece. Mine offers me over 2 degrees of TFOV in my SW 8", which makes star hopping a real pleasure to do even in a Bortle 6. I use an RDF/Laser combo so the optical finder has zero use these days.. at this point it is more of a design element on my telescope that makes it look cooler 😅

Excellent 👏👏👏

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I'm fairly biased on the subject, but IMO everyone should learn to starhop before using any form of go-to. I'm talking about this being an enforced requirement. There should be Scope Cops that ride around checking amateurs' Star-hopper License. Get caught without it and your mount gets impounded and you get sentence to 24 hours outreach at star parties...