Grinding through Gemini.

[cotterless45]

Seems ages since I started observing the many binaries and triples here. About minus 7 degrees here last night. Clad in new Alpaca socks and fully kitted out, I progressed until under full dew heater, the objective began to freeze over. Thought that there was something desperately wrong with my eye or the high mist, until I had a look in the big end !

Very pleased to get

κ Geminorum , first at x120, doubting the tiny faint fleck , I went to a 5.5mm , giving x218 and there in the same place was the tiny flea, just outside the fine strokes of glare. Although a wide split, it certainly is a hard one.

63 Gem . Needs another visit with the drawing kit, a whole expanse of doubles in a quite a field.

Wasat is delicate nog only with the split, but the colours.

Σ1007 gives another full drawing field.

ΟΣΣ 80 provided a neat triple grouping.

Propus was my first target and I went back to it , without any luck.

Quite a cool night , if you like the ccccccold ! Nick.

[Perseus_m45]

Nicky Boy your a h ell of a man buddy.  That's abit much for me....!!

mike h

[John]

Yet again you have set me a challenge Nick

Another cold night (more like -2 than -7 though) but I think I've managed to get Propus / Eta Geminorum with my ED120 tonight. The primary looked golden / orange with a single diffraction ring and the secondary was embedded in the outer side of the diffraction ring rather like a gem in a ring. I needed 257x and 300x to show the split clearly. I'm not good at working out position angles but the secondary seemed to more or less precede the primary as it drifted across the FoV from E to W. Does that sound right ? The split seemed a clear black gap - it should be within this scopes ability but the brightness difference makes it seem much tougher.

My scope has started to frost up but I'm hoping to keep the objective clear for another view of comet Lovejoy Q2 later.

Thanks for the inspiration for a target again     

[chiltonstar]

Well done to crack Propus John! I tried a few doubles last  night, but the scope was frosting across before it had even fully settled down (-7 here I believe), so I admired Lovejoy instead with the 15x70s as it's high enough now to be seen from my garden. Amazingly bright, even with the Moon.

Chris

[lunator]

Nick

Good report.

John congrats on the split eta is very tricky your description sounds good the PA is 257 degrees

I put my OMC 250 out to cool last night. Had dinner the then came out to view, with 15 minutes it was totally frozen and dewed up. I had to call on the ST120 as back up.

Cheers

Ian

[neural]

Great report Nick, and thanks for the heads-up on 63 Gem and STTA 80, duly added to the to-do list.

I've failed eta Gem twice with my ED100 ... maybe tonight's the night!

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

I'd have taken my hat off to you,Nick,if I'd been there. On second thoughts.....!  You must be made of stern stuff.

[John]

Got Eta Geminorum again tonight. Good split too at 318x with my 12" dob and the Myriad 5mm 110 degree eyepiece that FLO have loaned me. The primary star was just a little "hairy" due to the seeing but the secondary star was a very tight. Impressive performance for an 8 element hyper-wide eyepiece

I prefer the ED120 for binaries on the whole but the 12" dob can do pretty well too. I'll have a crack at Sirius to push the eyepiece further when "the Dog" shows it's nose around the neighbours house.

[The Flinty Fox]

Had my second stab at wasat this evening with my 150p, I had a go during the week seeing was bad. Anyway at first I couldn't see anything other than the primary and had to increase the mag to 125x before I could detect something hanging of the left hand side of the primary, and it was faint, very faint. Looked at it for ages and it would come and go until eventually I thought OK maybe there is something there. This is a difficult double, for me at least, the mag difference and the colour of the secondary makes it a really hard spot. On paper it appears relatively easy, turned out to be a lot harder. Will have to go back to this one and maybe try some easier ones in the meantime.

[chiltonstar]

I tried Propus (Eta Gem) tonight - first time - after a fairly unimpressive session with Jupiter.

What a lovely pair, with (as stated above) a clear golden-coloured primary, with the secondary close to due W of the primary. 

With my 127 Mak, the separation was best at x190; still visible at x120 but very close. The seeing wasn't really good enough for x250, although the secondary was still visible, albeit a bit fuzzy.

Chris

[The Flinty Fox]

Had a third attempt at wasat last night and am pretty certain i spotted it this time round. Seeing was a bit better and could definatly make out its orangey/red partner, so am quite pleased with that. I then decided to have a go at kappa gem which turned out, i thought, to be more of a challenge dispite its greater seperation and it took say 30mins or so to pin it down, but i think i got it. The best views of both was 125x with the eyepieces i have (could maybe do with a little more choice). Both these doubles are a little like fainter more difficult versions of eta cassiopeia which is where i started last night. Would have done more but my feet where getting cold.

Paul.

[chiltonstar]

Had a third attempt at wasat last night and am pretty certain i spotted it this time round. Seeing was a bit better and could definatly make out its orangey/red partner, so am quite pleased with that. I then decided to have a go at kappa gem which turned out, i thought, to be more of a challenge dispite its greater seperation and it took say 30mins or so to pin it down, but i think i got it. The best views of both was 125x with the eyepieces i have (could maybe do with a little more choice). Both these doubles are a little like fainter more difficult versions of eta cassiopeia which is where i started last night. Would have done more but my feet where getting cold.

Paul.

I've tried to image Wasat several times to see what colour the secondary really is, but no luck so far. Visually to me at x190, it looks like a tiny purple diamond compared with the white or slightly blue-white (to me) primary. It's not much of a challenge for a small scope as the stars are well separated (5.8 arcsec), but it is pretty. 

Chris

[The Flinty Fox]

Was out looking at Jupiter as it was in opposition then decided to have another pop at wasat. My scope had been cooling for at least two hours and I had a little tweak with collimation earlier and it seems to have helped. The secondary was much easier to see, and yes it did look a bit purplish. Was looking at 125x.

Seeing may have been better better but it seems that cooling and collimation does seems to help.

Paul