Double star list please

[spaceboy]

Hi All

Hoping the skies are going to stay clear tonight but as they remain reasonably light I was thinking I might give some double stars a go "seeing permitting".

Looking for a list of 10 os so reasonably easy to find but challenging Doubles. Any suggestions guys and gals.

SPACEBOY

[Viv]

Apologies - but can't remember who originally posted this link - but it's a good one.

Here ya go Spaceboy

Double Stars - TOP 200 most beautiful double stars

[Astro Imp]

Hi Spaceboy,

Have you had a look at:- Tonight's Sky

[spaceboy]

Thanks guy these links are perfect. Nice easy straight forward resolve to my nights observing

[Astro Imp]

Pleased to be of help.

[bish]

Glad you posted this as it's just what I am going to go out and do in about an hour. I rarely look at double stars and now is the time to do it.

[Bried]

Albireo is one of my favourites.

[spaceboy]

Well that went well Got out at and all set up for 23.00 and while the scope cooled down had a go at the usual doubles which weren't to bad giving the sky was still blue only to find as it went darker shade the clouds come over

[bish]

Same here. Went out about 23:00. Had a quick look at the double double, went to look at Izar and there was total cloud cover despite the forecast of clear skies.

[Moonshane]

I faired a bit better here :

Last night (in a 6" scope f11) I looked at the following:

Saturn

M13

M57

Then doubles for a bit:

Gamma Virginis (Porrima)

Epsilon Lyrae (the double double)

Delta Cygni

Beta Cygni (Albireo)

Epsilon Bootis (Izar)

Alpha Ursa Minoris (Polaris)

tried again and failed with Zeta Herculis

and then a couple of new ones in Cygnus I have not seen before,

31 Cygni - nice triple system with warm white primary, cool white secondary and quite blue, smaller tertiary.

61 Cygni - according to my book a plain (which it is) but interesting double. It has the highest proper motion (motion relative to more distant background stars) of any star visible to the naked eye. It moves so quickly that its apparent position shifts by 30 arcminutes (diameter of the full moon) in about 150 years!!

I like to take my time over these and watch them for a bit, try different magnifications etc and I have started to see the minimum magnification where I can split the stars. I managed to split Izar and the double double with an 18mm BGO at 89x last night which was quite rewarding. I also couldn't resist using my 6-3mm Nagler zoom at 533x to see 'bus lanes' through the doubles concerned. SO glad I made my EQP!

[bish]

I could just split the double double at x125 but doubt could have gone much lower. Albireo was behind my roof, which was a bit annoying.

[Moonshane]

I think the slow focal ratio of my scope helps with doubles. I often struggled with the double double with my 12" dob at lower mags.

[Capricorn]

Slightly less then Scarlet's 200 but a reasonable start:

Astronomical Data - Colored Double Stars

[spaceboy]

Thanks Capricorn I like that the list has the colours.

[Capricorn]

It's short.

Tend to find that a reasonable sized list means that you have a chance of managing to do them all.

So even if you don't carry on you at least can complete it. Think that small achievable chunks are the best approach.

Didn't look at the contents, just had the page bookmarked from some time back, so posted it. Wonder if the colours they say match what you see. I have seen other lists where even the author lists several of the coloured pairs with 2 possibile combinations of 2 colours.