54 Leonis

[chiltonstar]

54 Leonis is in the Cambridge DSA list of double star showpieces, described as "lovely, but little-known...."

On my way round most of the Leo doubles last night, I included this one as I couldn't remember ever looking at it; pretty enough, but a "showpiece"? As usual, my estimate of the colours - (blue-white and brownish) differed from the Cambridge description "blueish-white and greenish-white".

Anyone else looked at it?

Chris

[Moonshane]

not yet but will next time out! cheers for the pointer.

[chiltonstar]

I have to say that Algieba nearby is so stunning that anything else is a bit of a let-down.....

Chris

[Moonshane]

that's very true Chris. I call it Golden Balls.

[David Smith]

Came across Algieba last night whilst hunting galaxies in the area, it is quite impressive. I don't very often do doubles but Algieba made me think I should do them more often.

[John]

Algieba was my first ever double - with a 60mm Tasco refractor and a 6mm Hyugens eyepiece about 30 years ago !

I'll always have a soft spot for it

I'll look up 54 Leonis next time I'm out though, I'm not familiar with that one.

[lunator]

In my OMC250 I had the pair appeared white with the secondary having a blue-ish tint.

Cheers

Ian

[steveb1977]

Just had a look at my notes. Apparently I had a look at it on 7th April 2002. No comment on the colours though. Will try and revisit it.

[Marki]

I checked 54 Leonis a couple of nights ago, using my 100mm f13 achro. Nice double, primary and secondary both whitish to me. Not as glorious as Algieba for lovely coloured photons.

[John]

I checked 54 Leonis a couple of nights ago, using my 100mm f13 achro. Nice double, primary and secondary both whitish to me. Not as glorious as Algieba for lovely coloured photons.

I've just picked this up with my ED102. Whitish primary and off white / grey secondary to me. Nice but not too challenging, apart from a little bending to get to the finder !

[Moonshane]

I looked at this earlier too. the colours were tricky to pick up but with my dobfractor set to 100mm f18, the colours tend to ping a bit more and I'd say definitely white and pale blue.

I also managed Zeta Cancri for the first time. a lovely triple system with all a pale yellowish white in colour. this is an easy initial split and then one of them splits again. needed about 300x for me anyway and easy to split at 170mm but not seemingly possible at 100mm. Nice and challenging.

[Moonshane]

ps I got the idea of Zeta Can from Ian's avatar!

[chiltonstar]

ps I got the idea of Zeta Can from Ian's avatar!

I had wondered about the avatar....is it really Zeta CNC? Difficult to see at the small image scale.....

It is a nice triople though - splits into 3 fairly nicely in excellent/very good seeing with my 5" Mak at x190.

Chris

[lunator]

Chris,

Yep, it is zeta cancri, I took the pic afocally a couple of years ago, it isd a great triple that shows orbital motion over a very short period.

Cheers

Ian

[John]

I tried Zeta Cancri with my ED120 this evening. At 257x and 300x the close pair were a pronounced "peanut" with a distinct "waist" but if I got the split it was very fleeting at best. I'm not counting it !. Seeing here is not that great tonight though so a possibility for a better night perhaps.

[chiltonstar]

After looking through the pages on Leo doubles in TLAO, I thought a try at Kappa Leonis* would be a nice challenge; unfortunately last night (here at any rate) it was quite hazy and my - very limited - star hopping skills weren't up to the job. I didn't manage to find it before hypothermia set in.

Chris

* Mags 4.6 & 9.7, sep 2.4", SSW from A.