Question about Sirius

[weetooner]

Hi folks, Can I just ask what should I expect to see when I look at Sirius? I have just got a Orion xt8 and when I was out tonight decided to have a look at Sirius and I could not get a clear view of it, all I could see was (if I can describe it right) flashing blue, white and red colours, is this what I should be seeing? 

I think I have collimated the scope but even Jupiter looked a little bit fuzzy although I could see some bands and the moons, our own moon was as clear as a bell and I could clearly see craters and ridges.

Many thanks.

[Tinker1947]

It poor seeing as Sirius is low in the east your getting a lot of dirty air to view through, try Capella much better viewing.....

[Lorne]

Tried to view it ( and split the 2 stars last night) and had the same result as you, multicoloured flashing like a xmas tree!!

Its pretty low in the sky at our latitude and as Tinker above says, there's a lot of dirty atmosphere to look through to see it. It may get a little higher later in the season so hopefully it will give better views.

L.

[John]

I've just been able to split Sirius tonight with my 12" dob @ 227x and 265x using orthoscopic eyepieces. Sirius B is very faint and just glimmers very faintly though the diffraction of light around Sirus A. It's a real tough challenge from the UK though and needs a scope and eyepieces that absolutely minimize the light scatter around the brighter component. 

There is a huge brightness difference between these stars, they are low down, and they reasonably close together (8 arc seconds currently) so it's a toughie !

[weetooner]

Cheers folks, just thought it was something to do with my scope, but it seems I just chose the wrong target lol.

[John]

Cheers folks, just thought it was something to do with my scope, but it seems I just chose the wrong target lol.

Being the brightest star in the sky, and one of the closer ones to us, Sirius is worth a look even though it's low altitude means that the view can be a bit "messy" 

Try Castor in Gemini sometime, thats a nice double star of more or less equal brightness. 100x or so should show it well 

[ronin]

Sirius must have been very low and that will be the major problem, but everything you describe sounds about right.

You could try Capella and see if you can split the 2 main stars, it is conveniently high.

[wheresthetorch?]

Personally, I find the twinkling of rainbow colours in Sirius part of the attraction when I observe it. It can be quite beautiful.