[Saturnine (Jeff)]

Hello All

I have been an avid reader of others reports posted on here and enjoy them and the fact that there are still many observation amateurs out there in telescope land. Have been intending to post reports several times in the recent past but I am not a great record keeper of my observations and time slips away too quickly for me to get my observations in to print. So anyway here is my little attempt.

Observation of some Double Stars in the Constellation Volans. 21/1/20

Resources - Cambridge Double Star Atlas by James Mullaney and Wil Tirioin Double Stars for Small Telescopes by Sissy Haas.

Instument - 250mm F5 Newtonian / Dobsonian, 16mm & 7mm W.O. UW Eyepieces.
Seeing 6 / 10 Transparency 4 ( some thin smoke haze )
Bortle 5 ( Orange Zone )

Innes 351 Sep. 16.4" P.A. 333* Mag. A 6.5 B 10.0
Tenth mag. secondary only just visible with direct vision despite the generous separation at 178 X. Primary is orange but B too faint to discern any colour.

Gamma Volans. Sep. 13.7" P.A. 298* Mag. A 3.9 B 5.4
Both stars appear yellowish, a bright easy double in a field of several fainter stars giving a pleasing view.

H3997. Sep. 1.9" P.A. 126* Mag. A 7.1 B 7.0
Excellent equal mag pair of white stars cleanly separated by a thin black gap at 178X.

Zeta Volans. Sep. 16.5" P.A. 117* Mag. A 4.0 B 9.7
Easy double despite the mag. difference, well split at 178X . Primary appears orange but B too faint to tell.

Epsilon Volans. Sep. 6.0" P.A. 24* Mag. A 4.4 B 7.3
A white and pale yellow pair easily split in a field of several faint field stars making for a pretty sight.

Kappa Volans. Sep. AB 64.8" PA 58* BC 37.6" PA 31* Mag. A 5.3
B 5.6 C 7.7
A lovely moderately bright triplet in a slightly bent line best seen at 78X , lower powers giving a better overall view than higher mags.

While in the region I moved the scope north to Carina to a pair of pairs in a bent line with another similar mag. field star that I had previously observed.
Moderate powers and an UW eyepiece are needed to separate the closer pair but to keep the 3 main stars in the same field.

RMK 6 Sep. 9.1" P.A. 26* Mag. A 6.00 B 6.51

HJ 3958 Sep. 28.4 P.A. 279* Mag. A 6.88 B 9.14

The other field star in the line is HiP 35589 at mag. 5.4. An interesting field.

Just for the exercise I moved the scope over to the Trapezium in M42 but even at 312X ( 4mm WO Uw ) could not see E or F, which gives some indication of the extinction caused by the smoke haze despite the reasonably steady seeing.

Hope someone finds this report worth reading.

Cheers