Ad Astra Observatory

In an image of M51 taken near Feb 5, 2009 (todo: find this image), there is a really pretty blue star that’s very nearby the galaxy. I’d like to use that star as a star hop target.

I don’t actually intend to star hop, but it would be nice to be able to glance in the finder and know that I was relatively close.

I have the star patterns around Aldebaran memorized, and the patterns around M42. I can star hop to M31 with binoculars. But for everything else, I basically have to use goto and hope that my pointing model hasn’t decayed.