seeing double, an observation report by Mr. Ving Ster
date: 27.10.05
seeing: 4/10
transparency: 7/10
scope: 8" reflector
A night of clear skies for once
and i was going to capitalise on it!!!
A few days ago i was playing with my palm asto software and noticed that it showed about 50 doubles too... i just didnt have them ticked so they'd show. i did so and now it shows some real beauties!
so i spent the night chasing some of these doubles....
in hydrus I spotted Pi Hydrus and Eta Hydrus. both of these are splitable in binoculars (or in my case the finder) and showed up as whites in my 15mm eyepiece. I quickly moved from these to something more interesting.
Zeta Pheonix is quite pretty tho. A is white and mag 4 while B is blue and mag 6.9. they could be split in my 15mm and the colours showed best there but they split easier in my 7.5mm EP. the seperation is 6.6".
quite close by is Beta Tuc. A and B were split easy in the 15mm EP (@27" seperation). both stars are white and almost he same magnitude.
accross to Upsilon Eridanus. a seperation of 8.3" made it quite pretty in the 15mm EP. both stars are white and are 1 mag difference in brightness.
Alpha Pisces is another double at about mag 4. A is mag 4.2 and B is mag 5.2. I couldnt seperate these two in mt 15mm at all and had to up the magnification with my 10.5mm. both stars showed as a brilliant white and really close together at 1.8" seperation.
86 Pisces is a wide double at 22.8" and pretty with its whita A star and yellow B star. it was just a step to the left of Alpha Pic. I used the 15mm in this one.
I saw a few others but these are the only ones I took notes for.
hope this inspires some newbies to chase doubles
the palm software i use is called
Planetarium v 2.3.1 and should be avaliable on
www.aho.ch/pilotplanets should anyone want to have a looksee
PS, this was also the first test for my seat. it worked great and was realy easy to adjust and confuy with its cow print cover
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
