February Targets

Hi, Trey.

One thought (if you haven’t aready) is to try Telescopius (https://telescopius.com/). There is also a phone app. You can put in your location, your equipment, what sort of things you want to photograph and several other filters and it will tell you what’s in the sky, when, and where. You can also check the framing of your image as it would appear with your own scope and camera. I’m new enough to this and find it has been super helpful.

Cheers.

Paul

I use Stellarium and have since the beginning. Now that I use NINA, I found I can use Stellarium as my finder and it meshes with NINA’s framing wizard. So I just browse around in Stellarium, pick a victim for the night, and let NINA frame it up. Then tweak the rotation if I prefer and set my victim up in the Legacy Sequencer.

Clean and simple. Both NINA and Stellarium are free Open-Sourced programs.

If you were to choose to use NINA, Cuiv got me going with it with his tutorials.

Trey Wood · Feb 7, 2026, 04:42 AM

Hey everyone!

I just got my first ‘real‘ rig coming Monday and looking for targets to shoot.
I’m not new to hobby necessarily but struggle this time of year with what to shoot.
For context, I am shooting at 250mm (Redcat51) with the 533MC Pro so in terms of galaxy, I feel I’m a bit limited there unless its pretty big.

I like nebulae the most but obviously will shoot whatever I can effectively. Currently, other than Orion / Rosetta / Pleiades / Horsehead, what targets do you guys like to shoot around this time of year?

Northern Hermisphere

Ya know, Trey, I think you will probably have your hands full just learning the new equipment. Which in itself is fun to me, but I spent much of my professional career troubleshooting and tweaking the best out of equipment. (A primary reason I took to this sport.)

Start with whatever looks interesting, whatever it might be. Galaxies are coming around and Nebula are cycling out. But you can work on perfecting your acquisition on most anything, maybe Betelgeuse will pop and you can catch it. Then when the nebula start rising gradually transform over to those old friends again.

You have a lot of fun ahead of you. And Congratulations on the new equipment. I look forward to occasionally peeking over your shoulder at what you are up to. 😉

PS: The waiting, and the clouds, is the hardest part. 😶‍🌫️

I remember that decision! Give yourself a fun one that is always good to revisit: Agree with the recommendations of others. For me, at that focal length, i might choose something iconic like M42 (Orion) and Barnard 33 (Horsehead) in the same FOV. Lots of details and processing challenges when you really get into it, but a very satisfying dopamine rush for a first target.

Nana Dadzie Ghansah · Feb 7, 2026, 08:24 PM

Trey Wood · Feb 7, 2026 at 04:42 AM

Hey everyone!

I just got my first ‘real‘ rig coming Monday and looking for targets to shoot.
I’m not new to hobby necessarily but struggle this time of year with what to shoot.
For context, I am shooting at 250mm (Redcat51) with the 533MC Pro so in terms of galaxy, I feel I’m a bit limited there unless its pretty big.

I like nebulae the most but obviously will shoot whatever I can effectively. Currently, other than Orion / Rosetta / Pleiades / Horsehead, what targets do you guys like to shoot around this time of year?

Northern Hermisphere

A few targets you can try with your rig this month:

SH 2-216 (it is a narrowband target)

vdb 31 (broadband)

IC 2087 (broadband)

SNR G119.5+10.2 (quite faint)

Jellyfish Nebula (narrowband)

Bode Galaxy (you will get a nice wide view of it + the Cigar galaxy and the IFN around it).

I’m glad you mentioned the Jellyfish Nebula. It’s a favorite of my Grand Daughter and I.

I’m gathering its light right now.

02-09-26: Last Nights burnt offerings…

📷 Jellyfish Nebula in Feb.C2L-h5FaqbjT_1824x0_uPV0gJ6B.jpg (1824×1219) <Biggie<

https://app.astrobin.com/i/o1awz0/

Trey Wood · Feb 9, 2026 at 03:41 PM

All my new equipment arrived today and of course, it is raining until next monday :)

Haha.. well, I think new equipment accompanied by clouds is good sign in the long run 😀. You will take awesome images this year 👍️