Seeing Double ~ Orion
been a while between drinks hey... hopefully these will star flowwing again soon, i have been way too busy but life is settling down again.
Seeing Double takes us away from the southern constellations to Orion this time. I plan to do more of a mixture this year, not the the southerns haven’t been fun mind you because I will be visiting them again and soon. Anyhow, on to this edition of Seeing Double…
Orion! A hunter among the stars. This constellation is probably <i>the</i> best know and most familiar in the sky. Home to the famous and much photographed Great Orion Nebula (aka messier 42) and the extremely difficult to see Horse Head Nebula this area is rich enough stars and DSOs to keep every amateur in awe for ages.
It is said about Orion that he is hunting Taurus the bull with his two hunting dogs (canis major and canis minor), chasing the bull across the sky from east to west… it is too bad that from the southern hemisphere he does this standing on his head! Down here the belt and sword make up what we call the saucepan. Mythology on Orion spans many different cultures and periods in time from the ancient Sumerians who saw him as a shepherd to the Greeks of whom he was a god to. Orion is one of the first known constellations in the sky.
There are many double and multiple stars in Orion, so many in fact that I could write pages and pages about them. Instead I have given you but a handful this time and may come back to do a “part 2”. These aren’t may favourites nor are they the best but like any double I like them.
Before we move on to the list it is worth noting that I read n a article somewhere that Betelgeuse or Alpha Orionis may not in actual fact be there any more… quite a headache producer this one, but when you consider that what we are seeing when we look at it is soooo far in the past it may very well have gone supernova or maybe not. But won’t it be spectacular!
Anyhow, heres the list:
1. rigel (stf 668) 0.30/ 6.80 : . rigel is a fave amoung the orion constellation and one of the main stars forming the feet? of orion. and easy split in goog conditions the main star can ofeten bee a bit too bright, drowning out its smaller friend.
2. sigma orionis (stf 3135) : a beatuy in the area just above atlitak in the belt. this system of stars contains four. a medium aperture will resolve them all.
3. alnitak (stf 774)1.88/ 3.70 2.6"/: forming part of the belt alnitak is a triplet... to the average telescope tho it is a double of brilliant white and blue (A and B respectively) although fairly close and slowly moving apart it is a pretty easy split.
4. H 5 25 3.60/10.97 33.7"/ : yup, its a wild goose chase! back up near rigel again you’ll find this one. more of a challenge for really small scope but fine for my 8er! the primary is a bright white and the secondary an indistinguishable (long word huh!) dim colour.
5.theta orionis... the trap! there are so many guides to the trap on line that i wont post anything much. I counted six stars on a breezy night. how about you!
6. stf701 6.13/ 8.09 6.0"/: a nice easy split of white primary and blue secondary which is a small hop from rigel.
7.knt3 4.57/ 8.62 2.9"/: I am not sure why i had troubles with this one but i did. its not super close but i had to use fairly high magnification on it. the primary appears white or light blue and secondary might be orange or red.
8. STF 728 4.44/ 5.75 1.3"/: this is a hard one if the conditions arent right. I have done this one before under favourable conditions but due to the bad seeing at the time of typing this and the closeness of the double i couldnt see the split this time. give it a go tho if you are up to the challenge. from memory both stars are white.
9. stf 378 3.51/ 5.45 4.3"/: just for reference numbers 8- were done on 7.1.07, a particularly bad night of about 3/10 seeing but as these are desperate times and it could be some time before i get clear skies again i gave it a go. this double is not a hard one at all, but due to the seeing the gap was close to closing at times. A star and the dimmer B are both white in bad seeing.
10.stf 817 8.68/ 8.93 18.6"/: an easy split under just about any conditions it seems. both stars look almost identical to my eyes so its hard to know which to call the primary. just as well they both showed as the same yellow colour too in my scope.
Sharp splitting everyone.
DH
[i]ps: my blog (link in signature) has a couple of pics i took (poor ones), so go have a looks
