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Double stars in Capricorn
For the past few weeks I have been regularly checking three stars that form a small triangle in Capricorn. These stars, Omicron, Pi, and Rho can be seen together in an eyepiece yielding a field of view of around 1 degree.
Omicron is an easy even double, resolvable at around 50x in virtually any telescope and is very attractive.
Pi is much tougher, a 5th mag primary with an 8th mag companion at around 3" separation. I can just detect this at around 120x in my 106AT APO refractor.
Then there is Rho. In itself a very wide double but the main star is awful tough. I have found that I can detect the presence of the 9th mag companion with around 150x, but to make sure of the observation I need around 300X which is maxing out my 695mm FL refractor. The separation can be no more than 1" - I reckon splitting this star is much tougher than Antares, but last night I can confirm that I successfully split this one for the second time in a week in the small refractor - the heat has brought some good seeing in our area.
In between first looking at these stars with my 106AT, I masked off the 18" to 7" and confirmed all the above observations.
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