Ruddy, to my knowledge you were in fact hunting globs, M3 and M5. Be
careful, M81 and M82 are galaxies. You could end up millions of
light-years from home in seconds with that telescope. Now if in fact
you were finding M81 and M82 while I was off mooching aperture from
Czerwinski, they're still galaxies and very far away.
As we were talking about, the big globs are usually 10's of thousands
of ly's from here, in the halo of the Milky Way. M81 and M82 are
close galaxies, not far outside of our Local Group, some 12 million
ly's away. Only ca 120 quintillion kilometers. Definitely take your
hat.
And like we keep telling you, mooching is an honored occupation that
we highly encourage. It's fun to share. Too many people, DINKs having
aging crises in their 30's, get gear way too quick and then
disappear. Stick around, you're with us, pal.
-- Jamie Dillon <*> speech pathologist jamie_dillon@No-Spam "_____" -- Harpo Marx