Mizar Alcor Double?

[Charic]

With the Moon in my Zenith, as bright as Daylight? I was trying to locate M101 Pinwheel Galaxy, Using the Double Star  Mizar/Alcor  as my guide to Star hop. Now although I never saw M101, but managed M31 and m106, I actually saw the double star for the first time. This baffles me now? I`ve always believed that Mizar / Alcor was the double, and the www seems to agree. However, I could see Mizar as a double too. So Into Stellarium, zoom right in, and there it is, but no reference to the other Star, and unable to click on it. Now whilst viewing, i thought to myself "all these years ive been looking at the wrong Star (Alcor) and this is what I should be looking at?"  But I can see two Stars Mizar & ? so can anyone shed any further info. I`m looking around the www, but everything is still saying Alcor is the double, so what am I seeing? 

[hoops86]

Mizar is 100% a double

Alcor is the star you can see with your eyes thats next to it.

[hoops86]

This might help

[Tinker1947]

Mizar and Mizar B, Alcor .

Mizar and Alcor the slight refractors on Mizar is Mizar B

Mizar and Mizar B

[Charic]

 Mizar  &  Mizar `B` ?   many thanks.

[ronin]

Alcor is apparently a double as well.

[jambouk]

From:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TGHWlHkglrw/TOj4YjyfBzI/AAAAAAAAAts/HZWUH50_p-Q/s1600/Mizar%2Band%2BAlcor.jpg

[Stu]

This was one if the first things I observed, and is still a favourite which I observe regularly. This is an extract from a post I made in response to another question, may be useful.

1). Doubles can be naked eye, binocular, telescopic or spectroscopic. This entirely depends upon their separation. If you take Alcor and Mizar as an example, they are a naked eye double. Mizar itself is a close binocular or easy telescopic double to split so they show as a three star system; Mizar A, Mizar B and Alcor. I believe some, if not all of these are spectroscopic binaries too which means they are too close to separate with a telescope, but by analyzing the light from them you can detect the Doppler shift showing that it is actually two stars orbiting each other.

Cheers,

Stu

[AndyWB]

And the 3rd bright start between them is interesting for having a name and some history, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidus_Ludoviciana

[acey]

With the Moon in my Zenith, as bright as Daylight? I was trying to locate M101

Try when there's no moon. M101 has very low surface brightness so you want the darkest possible conditions - any kind of light pollution (moon or streetlights) pretty much kills it.

[Cybermage]

I know this is an old post but I wanted to add this in for anyone else who stumbled on this with Google.  

In 2009 it was discovered that the "pair" are actually six stars, with Mizar being a quadruple star and Alcor being a binary.  http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/mizar-and-alcor-the-horse-and-rider

From the article:

Quote

As for Alcor, it was long believed that Mizar and Alcor were not gravitationally bound and did not form a true binary star system. In 2009, though, two groups of astronomers independently reported that Alcor actually is itself a binary, consisting of Alcor A and Alcor B. Astronomers now believe that the Alcor binary system is gravitationally bound to the Mizar quadruple system – making six stars in all, where we see only two with the eye.