Neglected Double

[Cloudwatcher]

Managed to get in a couple of hours observing last night despite the less than best conditions. There was a lot of high thin cloud cover so did the Double Star Tour and even managed a few images.

I was not aware that the small constellation of Lyra was was blessed with a number of 'doubles' both optical and physical. Apart from the showpiece 'Double Double' there several pleasing and quite colourful doubles to be enjoyed in the area and Zeta Lyra alone is worth lingering awhile. Not quite on a par with Albireo, next door in Cygnus but of reasonable magnitude and takes high magnification well. There are a number of other coloured optical doubles to be seen in a slow sweep of the region that may take your fancy and which will appear more 'saturated' if imaged.

If you can spare a few moments of precious observing time 'give it a go'.

CW

(as usual,click to enlarge)

[barkis]

That's a very nice image CW. I wonder just how many of SGL's observers take in double stars. Apart from the natural beauty of these pairings, there must be lots of binary systems that need their separations re calculated. I'm sure it's a job some dedicated amateurs are more than capable of. Even the spectrascopics could be included.

Anyone fancy the job. I think our weather would be a deterrent.

Ron.

[lunator]

CW

Very nice pic.

Currently there are about 20-30 individuals making measurements. Most using CDD's etc.

There are about 6 making visual measures.

The WDS has 100,000+ systems and most of the easier ones Mag 8 & brighter have been measured within the last 10 years.

The fainter ones may not have been measured more than once and need to be confirmed.

I spend alot of my time working on these pairs.

My most recent measurement activity has been to measure 70 Oph as this is an orbital pair that has an accurately calculated orbit.

Cheers

Ian

[Ant]

How would you go abpout taking measurements with a CCD. I'd happily give it a go with the Toucam is that is acceptable.

What do you need to know , scope FL and chip/pixel size?

What about the quality of the scope? I have two 80mm scopes one a F7 APO and the other is a F11 Achro. Could I use either?

Nice image CW BTW I think that doubles like that look really nice!

Ant

[lunator]

Ant

I'm not really an expert on the CCD/Webcam process.

From what I understand you have to work out the image scale based on the pixel size.

There is a clever piece of software by Florent Losse called reduc.

Here is a description of the process.

http://www.jdso.org/Summer2007/Schlimmer.pdf

Also the Webb Society DSSC is a good source of info.

www.webbsociety.freeserve.co.uk

Cheers

Ian

[Whippy]

That's a very nice image CW. I wonder just how many of SGL's observers take in double stars. Apart from the natural beauty of these pairings, there must be lots of binary systems that need their separations re calculated. I'm sure it's a job some dedicated amateurs are more than capable of. Even the spectrascopics could be included.

Anyone fancy the job. I think our weather would be a deterrent.

Ron.

I'm getting into doubles as I found them to be good summer objects. Ie: they don't need completely dark skies to enjoy them. I'm going through the favourites atm (Albeiro, Rasalgethi, Almach, Cor. Caroli etc etc), but I'm sure I'll be hunting out some more obscure ones soon.

Tony..

[barkis]

I'm getting into doubles as I found them to be good summer objects. Ie: they don't need completely dark skies to enjoy them. I'm going through the favourites atm (Albeiro, Rasalgethi, Almach, Cor. Caroli etc etc), but I'm sure I'll be hunting out some more obscure ones soon.

Tony..

Well you have plenty to go at Tony. It's reckoned that about half of the stars in the Solar neighbourhood belong to Binary or multiple systems. (Info. from Norton Star Atlas.)

Ron.