Andromeda challenges.

[cotterless45]

Very difficult night with light pollution heightened by a warm moist atmosphere. A race before the Moon jumped up the light ! A trawl around Messiers and I decided to close down some Andromeda gems. Starting with the wonderful triple on the Perseus border, Σ162. Just a delicate sight at x150 picked them out. The rest tumbled from 2.0",1.9",1.8",1.2" and a return to 36 Andromedae at 1.1". It was a challenge of focussing and relaxing at the eyepiece to get these. I should definitely get Σ162, a fine sight.

The simple f8 Chinese achro is a good un. A Baader semi apo in the 2" diagonal eliminates any ca effects . I use a 5.5mm Meade UWA and a Vixen x2 triplet Barlow with an old school 10mm Vixen S.Plossl to give x240. I had doubted the smallest of splits , but my good friend Patbloke followed this chain through a few nights back,

clear skies !

Nick.

[Knighty2112]

My God! It's full of stars!  Well, at least your EP was. Nice report Nick. Still awaiting to get the focuser replaced on my 'new' frac, so can't wait to test it out on some double stars when I get it back.  

[Patbloke]

Superb Nick, looking forward to getting that 1" sticker produced shortly?

Spent an hour with a Nexstar SE and a beautiful dual focus Opticstar Gold 80mm... Ooooo very much frustration trying to align using the wedge... Had trouble getting the 52 degree angle to match on the measure bar and the phone app... ended up just going for a straightforward alignment epic fail - ha ha Need to allow more time next clear skies :-)

Great report and beautiful pictures once again Nicko

[Knighty2112]

Have to try for 36 Andromedae myself with my current ST120 frac.  

[Paz]

23 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

Have to try for 36 Andromedae myself with my current ST120 frac.  

Me too!

[chiltonstar]

Just had a look at 36 And for the first (?) time - very nice pair, cleanly split with the 180 Mak at x270 (10mm Ortho) with a fair bit of dark space between the pair, looking slightly like car headlights at a distance. I had to use the setting circles to find the pair though as my star hopping skills are close to zero! Both stars slightly yellowish by my reckoning.

Chris

[John]

Thanks for the report and list of Andromeda targets Nick - interesting and helpful, as ever

I had a good look and 36 Andromeda on Friday night with my Tak 100. Rather to my surprise, got very close to a split at 300x. I'll keep at it while it's well placed and press the ED120 and LZOS 130 into service on these targets in due course.

It's nice to see this constellation getting some credit for targets other than the big fuzzy oval !

[Paz]

I was out last night and remembered 36 Andromedae, I only had the ST120 and 90x magnification available but I gave it a go.

Not split! I gave it quite some time but no way. I even tried guessing the position angle of an imagined deformity but that was a fail! Maybe more magnification would do it, maybe not. It would be good to split with the f5 refractor rather than getting the Maksutov or reflector on it.

I looked at a couple of others to check out what was doable - I tried SAO73656 which is magnitude 6.5/6.7 and 2.4" - this I could just see a clear split but it would come and go with the seeing. I tried SAO74295 which is Mag 5.6/6.3 and 4.1" and that was a consistently clean and easy split right from the start.