Four Orion Doubles, But No Running Man

[cloudsweeper]

Another good early evening session before a meal and a relaxing evening indoors.  Love this time of year!

I haven't really gone for many doubles, tending to go for clusters by preference, but Orion was peeping up over some houses in the SE, so I went for his key components.

GPS and one-star alignment on Aldebaran worked a treat, putting all targets almost dead centre.

RIGEL: Low at first, misty conditions, and a heating flue in a roof underneath, so it was fuzzy and couldn't be split.  Later however at x113 and with AV, I spotted a close, faint companion star.

MINTAKA: Easily saw two components of this multiple star at x 48, getting fuzzy for the above reasons above this mag.

MEISSA: A nice line of three close stars.  Pattern confirmed with Wiki.  (Hope I'm right about this!!)

HATSYA: Faint, close companion of this multiple spotted at x113, although it was again rather fuzzy.

NGC 1977: Running Man Nebula - the star pattern matched perfectly, but there was no noticeable nebulosity around it, with or without filters.  More darkness required!

Another great, short session, with somewhat different targets.  The pleasure and variety of this hobby know no bounds!

Doug.

[Size9Hex]

Nice one Doug. Doubles are great targets. How bright/dark is your site? I don't think I've ever seen the Running Man from home where it's a bit light polluted (NELM 5.5 at zenith, but quite a bit worse in the south in the directhan tin of Orion!) but from a dark site (mag 6 and a bit) it's doable. Low mag helps and no filter.

[cloudsweeper]

29 minutes ago, Size9Hex said:

Nice one Doug. Doubles are great targets. How bright/dark is your site? I don't think I've ever seen the Running Man from home where it's a bit light polluted (NELM 5.5 at zenith, but quite a bit worse in the south in the directhan tin of Orion!) but from a dark site (mag 6 and a bit) it's doable. Low mag helps and no filter.

Thanks a lot Paul - nice to hear from you again.  S and N aren't so good (dull orange glows), W is mostly trees, but E is probably best.  Orion being S/E is OK, but still not really dark.  Plus there is a lot of light trespass here until the early hours. 

I've since found that Meissa is in fact a quintuple, and I saw three components in a line - very attractive, with a set of three further stars pointing towards them.

Incidentally, how do you measure NELM for a given site?

Doug.

[Size9Hex]

NELM is the naked eye limiting magnitude. The magnitude of the faintest star you can see with the unaided eye basically. It's not a perfect measure, but it gives an idea. Two people might give two different answers for the same site depending on their eyesight and how they measure it. Varies from night to night too depending on how clear/transparent the sky is. I tend to look near the zenith where it's darkest and I'm fully dark adapted and spend a few minutes trying to find the faintest possible star in averted vision. I see some folks use sky quality meters to measure darkness too though.

edit - I should add, I don't spend too much time worrying about checking NELM. Better to be enjoying the sights in the sky! I did check it a few times at my local spots when I started though, just to get an idea of whether they were good/bad for light pollution.

[cloudsweeper]

Thanks Paul - very helpful!

Doug.

[Stu]

Nice report Paul. Give Sigma Orionis a try next time if you haven't already, one of my favourites, a quadruple with a triple nearby.

[cloudsweeper]

24 minutes ago, Stu said:

Nice report Paul. Give Sigma Orionis a try next time if you haven't already, one of my favourites, a quadruple with a triple nearby.

Thanks, Stu!

I managed three in Sigma.

Doug (not Paul).

[Stu]

27 minutes ago, cloudsweeper said:

Thanks, Stu!

I managed three in Sigma.

Doug (not Paul).

Doh! Sorry Doug, getting myself confused

The fourth star can be tricky, it's pretty faint but great when you see it.

[jetstream]

Excellent report Doug.

The Running Man nebulosity is easy to see under dark skies and the "Man" shape itself will also show itself but it likes larger image scale and with an EP that lets the light shine on the eyeball nicely.

[alan potts]

A nice report on my favourite area of the sky, only wish I could get out to see it.  I though Sigma Orionis was a 5 star system, I have split the brightest of the group in to two though it is very tight at .33 and you need excellent conditions and a fairl large scope.

Alan

[JOC]

I like this, and I think I could have a go at finding all the targets above - I think my telescope would be good enough - I can get 4 stars out of the trapezium so I'll certainly try Sigma Orionis (now I've found it in Stellarium it doesn't search my name, so I clicked around the constellation until I found the name).  In fact I've now looked them all up on Stellarium and eyeballed where they are in Orion (I hadn't thought to look at his 'head' previously) and Orion is lovely and easy for me - it is prime at the moment in my dark bit of sky round about 7pm and M42 is regular 'hit' at the moment.  At the moment it's good to find easy wins and these targets might be easy for me to find.

[cloudsweeper]

1 hour ago, alan potts said:

A nice report on my favourite area of the sky, only wish I could get out to see it.  I though Sigma Orionis was a 5 star system, I have split the brightest of the group in to two though it is very tight at .33 and you need excellent conditions and a fairl large scope.

Alan

Yes Alan, I believe Sigma Orionis is a quintuple system - I took a look on a previous session but only spotted three components.  I understand a fourth is tricky, and the fifth very tricky indeed!

Doug.

[cloudsweeper]

1 hour ago, JOC said:

I like this, and I think I could have a go at finding all the targets above - I think my telescope would be good enough - I can get 4 stars out of the trapezium so I'll certainly try Sigma Orionis (now I've found it in Stellarium it doesn't search my name, so I clicked around the constellation until I found the name).  In fact I've now looked them all up on Stellarium and eyeballed where they are in Orion (I hadn't thought to look at his 'head' previously) and Orion is lovely and easy for me - it is prime at the moment in my dark bit of sky round about 7pm and M42 is regular 'hit' at the moment.  At the moment it's good to find easy wins and these targets might be easy for me to find.

Have you tried F4 on Stellarium? > Sky tab > stars > then push the Labels slider along.  This gives more names and other designations.  (Not too far though, as this can fill the view!)

Doug.

[JOC]

I'll give that a try Doug - cheers!