Ags

Build in haste, repent at leisure... Actually it is more likely to be: Build in haste, commission a study, do nothing. I vaguely recall a government minister saying the was going to be "world-beating lorry park" or something similar.

Went over the area again with my C6 this time instead of the Skymax 102. The extra aperture really added to the view of the double double's double. Also got a lot more color out of O. Struve 525. Dropped in on Albireo and 61 Cygni too. Got a much better view of M13 and M57. Aperture rules. But I did spend half my time doubting my collimation, although the C6 did split Zeta Lyrae nicely, better than the Mak in my opinion! The SCT attracted dew pretty quickly tonight sadly.

Interesting - I will measure the exit pupil on my C6. I haven't noticed a loss in aperture (either with my eyeballs or by the impact on photographic exposure times), but it will be easy to verify. Wtihout aperture loss, I should have just under 5mm exit pupil with a 30mm eyepiece.

Can't comment on the relative quality of the TS unit, but I am very happy with my Celestron-branded one.

Page layout enhancements continued...

Use it handheld then... 🤣

I have a 4 inch Mak and 6 inch SCT. The SCT gives a bigger exit pupil at higher magnifications, essential as my eyes are plagued with floaters. A Mak of similar aperture would just be too heavy for my setup. The SCT is also fitted with a 0.63 reducer giving it a 945mm focal length, so I can get 1.6° true field of view with 1.25" eyepieces. Reducers don't seem to work well with Maks, but with my SCT they seem to improve the view! On the other hand, the SCT doesn't hold collimation well. I am always tweaking the collimation screws and never 100% satisfied with the results. Another drawback of the SCT is star images are always a little messy. So for double stars I prefer my little Mak - it just gives a prettier view.

Thanks. This is what a page looks like at the moment (need to add a border around the two diagrams to visually separate them):

Faking a red torch with gimp... All the star colors are mixed with grey so they don't disappear under a red torch (they do fade a little). @wulfrun I don't want to make all the stars blue - the current colors indicate the rough spectral class.. While I like the idea of reflecting the spectral class, for fainter stars it may make more sense to opt for high contrast colors, namely the inverse of the background. From the below image I think the white background is likely to perform better. Another consideration is that Lulu Standard Color print does not cope with large areas of flat color, so that points to white background too.

I'd appreciate feedback on which diagram feels better- left or right? I suspect the white background might work better with a red light torch.

I also use a Skymax 102 i addition to the C6. I prefer the mak for double stars, but the C6 wins on planets as my eyes don't cope with exit pupils below 1mm. For faint fuzzies the C6 wins as it has a wider FOV (I use a .63 reducer).

I use a C6 on an AZ-GTI. The combination works well. Note the C6 only weighs 3.3kgs without accessories.

I got a draft copy of the book today and tested it tonight under the stars. I need to print on less glossy paper and increase contrast generally.

I'd heard of the double double's double, and thought this might be it. M57 is not too far away from these, maybe we should rename it the double double's double's bubble!

Well, tonight I did. Light pollution was dreadful; the neighbors have decided to uplight a tree that looms over the garden. This is in addition to the fairy lights they've strung along the top of the fence. The two doubles were both visible in the field of a 20mm Plossl (0.7° true field). The split between the doubles was exactly the amount needed to place one double in my blind spot, so if I looked at one pair the other would disappear.

I am representing position angles as radiating yellow lines. The angle of the widest separation is the longest line, the angle of the second widest separation is the second longest line, and so on.

Had a look at a few doubles tonight all easy to find. Struve 1825 - located one degree north of Arcturus, this is quite quite tight and faint in my Skymax 102, although the sky still had a bit of blue when I was observing it. Given the twilight and limited aperture I couldn't see any color. Others have seen yellow and orange. Epsilon Lyrae and Zeta Lyrae - Epsilon is a wide double even in my 8x50 finder, but I was pleased to see the finder could split Zeta too. Otto Struve 525 - easy to find inside the Lyra parallelogram, it seemed an unequal pair with an off-white primary and faintly blue secondary. It is split about as widely as Zeta and Beta. Beta Lyrae - A bright easily split white pair, the stars seemed less unequal than expected (primary varies between 3.4 to 4.4, secondary is only 8.6). Struve 2470 and Struve Struve 2474 - I did not find these but at least when I checked my star map on my laptop I could see clearly where I went wrong! So that's a win for my cartography Looking at my chart, I should have started at Sulafat, and hopped backwards past two pairings of stars to the third pairing - of these Struve 2470 is the northern one and 2474 is the southern one. I examined the first two pairings, but did not star hop far enough away from Sulafat. By the way, what is the right term for star hopping in right ascension - east/west is not quite right?

Labels can be a rabbit hole, but I don't want to get drawn in. My focus is on simple diagrams that give an overview, so minimising labels and structuring the diagram are the priorities, rather than trying to include a higher number of labels. I hope I don't have to do too much custom logic for the labels!

Mostly aesthetics... But note the green lines are actually almost as red as they are green, it's just our eyes are biased to seeing green. I think red lines look jarring: But final colors are dependent on red light torch testing 😀

I have been struggling with labels. Finding a way to include the names of prominent stars and doubles on the same small diagram is quite tricky! My latest ploy is to move the double labels to the left.

I have been trying out various eyepieces with the finder. I can reach focus with a Vixen SLV 6mm, ES 6.7mm and Vixen NPL 20 and 30mm. The only eyepiece that couldn't quite reach infinity focus was a Speer WALER 10mm. I have been quite liking the wide field offered by the Super 25, so the Svbony unbarlowed might work well for me. I am toying with using this as a basic travel scope. The views are ok, especially at low magnification, and it might actually be the right instrument for M31 or the Veil. The ES 6.7mm and Svbony 23mm would be all the travel eyepieces I need.

Have you installed the free program Stellarium? It lets you plan your observing sessions easily. Why not make a project looking at the bright stars visible at the moment like Arcturus and Vega. You can compare their color and brightness to the information about them like their temperature, size and distance. Wikipedia is a very good source of information.

Added grid lines and constellation labels. Changed the green to have a lot more red in it for night use.

@Spile The 500 list is really useful! May I borrow from it to fill out the regions where my maps are a bit bare? I am trying to keep to less than 200 stars as I can do two stars per page and color printing isn't the cheapest. Also, I want to keep the book relatively light.

Yes, my only concern with green (aside from aesthetics) is that the line might disappear under a red light.