lunator

I had a much better view last night. Using the grab and go ST80 set up the colour was more apparent. It has gone from the golden yellow colour similar to HD162834 to a reddish colour. Brightness was similar to HD162488. So probably about mag 8.1. The haze last night did make it look slightly dimmer. Cheers Ian

Hi John Nice report , I had short session with my ST80 last night. Despite Jupiter being just above the house the view was fairly steady. Saturn didn't look too bad either. Cheers Ian

Hi Nik same here. I had a look at 22.30 last night. There was a bit of haze/contrails around making things a little tricky. In my 15x70's RS Oph was fainter than HD162488 7.98 but slightly brighter than HD162506 8.38 so my best estimate is mag 8.2. The colour did seem more muted last night and I think the haze was the issue. Cheers Ian

Managed a quick look in the 15x70 Binos. It is slightly fainter then HD162834 but still slightly brighter than HD162506. I estimated mag 7.5. Cheers Ian

Hi John Nice report M33 is always tricky. I have never an it from home. It was cloudy here unfortunately. Cheers Ian

Hi JK 31 Sky Safari is an excellent bit of software. I use it on my phone and tab. The database is pretty accurate but not totally upto date. Only the WDS catalogue and Stella Doppie are fully upto date. It shouldn't be a major issue as Most doubles don't change quickly but where an observation is quite old then expect the parameters to have changed a bit. The advantage of SS is that it does get updated. I have numerous double star books and the data is quite inaccurate now. Cheers Ian

Hi Stu Congrats on the move, this is the area I have been looking at as well. I can't move for another couple of years. It is fantastic down there. If you get a chance take some binos up Golden Cap, and when at the coast you have to do some fossiling 😊 Cheers Ian

RS Oph is definitely fainter I estimate mag 6.5. It appeared slightly brighter than HD162713 and a similar colour. It was still very easy to find in the 10x50 binoculars and the ST80. Cheers Ian

Hi Paul Transparency is fairly easy. i know what I can see naked eye from my location on an excellent night (About mag 5.5) and this would score 1/5. This is very rare :). It is quite obvious when there is high cloud or haze about and once you can only see mag 3 stars you are well into a 4/5 transparency. I rarely try viewing anything other than the moon on these types of nights. Seeing is slightly trickier as it can vary quite quickly. You neeed to have a cooled scope and look at a de-focussed star. I use the alignment star when starting the EQ6. At high magnification you can see the atmospheric movements. Some nights it is obvious that there are "waves and wobbles" of air.This means that seeing will be 4 or 5/5. Other nights it can be very still and seeing will be 1 or 2 out of 5. As I do double star observing I can see if the seeing is changing. Even on nights of 3-4 out of 5 you can get moments of excellent seeing. cheers Ian

I managed to have a quick look last night. There was thin high cloud making it a less than perfect night. Using my ST80 with a 25mm ortho eyepiece giving x16' magnification approximately 2.75 degree field of view. I estimated the magnitude at 5.5. I hope for a few more clear night to watch it change colour. Cheers Ian

I use an A4 sketchpad. I add 5cm diameter circle to draw within. I note the day, time, seeing and transparency at the top of the page. I note the scope and magnification. Draw a sketch and add notes. I transfer the main data to a spreadsheet. Cheers Ian

Hi John, nice report :). I am in a Bortle 4 area which is an improvement on the usual sky. Had a quick look at some doubles. But the treat was saturn and Jupiter. I only had the ST80 and a max mag of x67 available. It was good to get a decent view of both planets as they are too low to be seen cleae ly from my garden. cheers ian

John, congrats on the 50k. I always enjoy reading your reports and I look forward to meeting up at a star party soon. Cheers Ian

Good 1st pics.😊 The great thing about the Moon is you can get plenty of practice. Look forward to seeing your pics when yo have the setup you want. Cheers Ian

Hi John, Paul Couteau used to say that you needed 2x your aperture before you really started doing the tight visual double stars 😀 He was speaking about measuring them but there is some truth in it for observing as well. For your 130 a x260 mag is just the beginning 😁 Cheers Ian

Hi Ags It is in the Cambridge double star atlas 2nd ed. This link should take you to his website. https://www.handprint.com/ASTRO/bineye1.html Cheers Ian

This will be a real challenge. I will be interested to see what can be achieved. just to give some insight, the latest info from WDS on the pair is primary is magnitude 2.02, secondary is magnitude 4.95. Separation 0.8. Based on the MacEvoy rule of thumb you would need about x425 magnification on a 150mm scope. To give you some hope on a night of excellent seeing it might be do-able at x250-300. Cheers Ian

Hi Richard There are still plenty of areas where amateurs can make a contribution. Just 2 off the top of my head are variable star observing and measuring double stars. I work in the latter area and this is almost totally an amateur astronomers area. This data is very useful in calculating orbits etc. Cheers Ian

Here is a quick process of zeta Cancri. I used AS3! to create the image. The first image was taken in Feb this year. The second image was taken afocally in 2007. It does show the movement if the AB pair. The Camera settings are as follows. I hope this helps. Cheers Ian [ZWO ASI120MC-S] Debayer Preview=On Pan=0 Tilt=0 Output Format=AVI files (*.avi) Binning=1 Capture Area=1280x960 Colour Space=RAW8 Temperature=9.5 High Speed Mode=Off Overclock=0 Turbo USB=86(Auto) Flip=None Frame Rate Limit=Maximum Gain=90 Exposure=0.019456 Timestamp Frames=Off White Bal (B)=95 White Bal (R)=52 Brightness=0 Auto Exp Max Gain=50 Auto Exp Max Exp M S=30000 Auto Exp Target Brightness=100 Mono Bin=Off Banding Threshold=35 Banding Suppression=0 Apply Flat=None Subtract Dark=None #Black Point Display Black Point=0 #MidTone Point Display MidTone Point=0.5 #White Point Display White Point=1 Notes= TimeStamp=2021-02-22T20:19:25.7419110Z SharpCapVersion=3.2.6442.0

Epsilon Lyrae should be doable. I was messing around with imaging Zeta Cancri and you can clearly see the AB pair. I was using a 250mm scope and and the ZWO 120MC-s. I will have a dig around and see what settings I used. Cheers Ian

Very small gaps in clouds here in Bucks. Had a brief glimpse at 10.12. hopefully will get another chance

Had another look tonight. It seems to be holding it's brightness. I thought it looked a tad dimmer at first but not entirely sure. Cheers Ian

I finally managed to have a look tonight. The guides posted on here were excellent. I used my grab and go ST80 at x16. I estimated the about 8.2. Cheers Ian

Hi John I am not aware that Procyon B has been seen using moderate sized scopes. I did a quick calc using my resolution spreadsheet. There are several guides to hard pairs are to split. The resolution ratio must be equal to the deltaM for the pair to be resolved. The resolution ratio is Separation/(116/Aperture of the scope) With the DeltaM of 10.4. The separation is approx 4.8" The Bruce MacEvoy rule of thumb 10.4 = (4.8/(116/252)) So Procyon would require either a 250mm scope or magnification of x250. In my experience this rule is too optimistic for large DeltaM pairs. Their are other calculations that are used Chris Lord has a nomogram that looks that this and it can be simplified to the equation 7log(separation(116/aperture). So 10.4 = 7Log(4.8)/(116/D) D= 750 SO you woul need a 750mm scope of x750 mag. My experience is closer to the formula 2.5+4Log 2.5+4Log(116/D) D= 2300 Or on a night of excellent seeing you can take the lamda number (Sep=(116/D) and divide by 2 and add 3. This is a resolution chart based on a Treanor plot. Showing the calculated limits of the various investigations. Procyon is the liitle blue diamond below the 10 line on the y-axis. The Sirius diamond is from my observation a few years back - Sep. of 9.2" it is exactly on the 10 line for the y- axis and 20 for the x- axis. This shows how much harder Procyon will be. Cheers Ian

The seeing on the 23rd was good. Usually when you look at the image on the laptop in average seeing you can see waves of atmosphere washing across the view but on the 23rd it was pretty steady. This was an image of Clavius I took slightly later. Cheers Ian