[goober (Doug)]

Observation Report: 22 March 2008

Location: Melbourne
Moon: Full
Beard: Thick and lustrous
Teeth: growing
Seeing: Pickering 3

A terrible night in Melbourne for astronomy - full moon, the annoying gusty south-easter, lots of twinkle. I could see about 20 stars with my naked eye. Break out the Agro Navis and go double star hunting... aligned on Archernar and Procyon. Everything was in the field of a 108x/45" eyepiece for the rest of the evening.

MODE TOUR -> DOUBLE STARS > Mag. 8 IN CRUX

Gamma Crucis - appeared to be three stars in the shape of a right angled triangle. Gamma appeared bright and golden/orange in colour. The other two stars appeared white to me.

Mu Crucis - nice pair around 30" apart.

Mimosa - Argo listed it as a double(?) - the closest star I could spot was the carbon star - ruddy red.

Iota Crucis - primary yellow, very faint (mag. 10?) star to the north.

h4488 - tight 5" double at 108x, mag. 8 and 10. The companion was very faint, barely visible.

Dunlop 117 - very nice - two mag. 7 stars and a third fainter star. The shape of these three stars formed a boomerang - cute. Good object.

Acrux - kissing pair at 108x.


MODE TOUR -> DOUBLE STARS > Mag. 8 IN CORVUS

h4481 - nice pair of equal mag. 7 stars about 5" apart.

B458 - barely could make this out - mag. 7 and mag. 10. The fainter star was almost invisible. The full moon was very close to Corvus.

B606 - couldn't split this one at all. Hit ENTER on the Argo Navis and got the information back that we're talking about 0.2" separation here. Okay.... moving on.

Struve 1604 - a tight triangle of stars of mag. 6/8/10. Nice.

Struve 1659 - looked a lot like the "Stargate" asterism on the star hop to M104. I couldn't make out the fainter member of the inner triangle. The resemblance to Stargate was bugging me, so I dialed up M104 on the Argo and it told me I was right on top of it! Struve 1659 is part of Stargate!

Finished the session touring the doubles of Orion - there are a lot of them in the Argo database. Didn't take notes.

The Argo Navis performed very well - hit every time. The ENTER key facility is great to get some notes on the object you're viewing.