A bag full of doubles

[Davesellars]

It's like daylight out there! 

The clouds had shifted off by 11 so off I trundled to my site this time with my 80ED with the aim to do something a bit different and go for some doubles. I used the SkySafari list called Coloured Doubles along with the RASC list of Coloured Doubles (thanks Bryan!).

At least it was a very quick setup just plonking the 80ED on the EQ5 a very rudimentary polar align and off we go... Most observations were done with my 11mm (54x) and 4.7mm (127x)

Xi Bootis - Easy split with 11mm and 4.7mm showing a good separation . Brighter yellow main star with small orange(ish) companion.

Delta Bootis - Well seperated an easy one at low magnification. Bright yellow main star and faint blue(?) companion.

Epsilon Bootis (Izar) - It certainly looked like there was another star there but I was not able to separate these.

Zeta1 Coronae Borealis - Really nice with good close but clear separation with the 4.7mm Lovely colour of blue and green/yellow stars of equal brightness.

Zeta1 Lyrae - Another nice double! Easy separated with brighter yellow star and off white companion (but difficult to see the real colour of this)

Delta1 Lyrae - Bright considerable separation. Yellow bright star with off white companion

Epsilon1 Lyrae (Double Double) - With the 4.7mm I was just about able to distinguish both sets of pairs as individual stars (difficult though!)

Beta1 Cygni (Albireo) - Very bright brilliant yellow and blue pair.

Omicron1 Cygni - Great triplet system - Bright yellow (main) star with faint close by off white/blueish and also an off white(greenish) star.

A couple of DSOs for giggles:

M57 - Fainter than a very faint thing but the ring discernible with the 4.7mm.

M13 - A smudge. actually it was a faint smudge at that. Completely rubbish  

Planets and Lunar:

Jupiter: I really enjoyed the view with the 11mm at only 54x gave considerable contrast and colour to the planet's main cloud belts. The 4.7mm performed well although subdued colour now it was quite sharp. Not much detail could be made out really on the surface apart from many cloud bands could be seen apart from the main central bands.

Saturn: very low down but nice to see as always. Quite a golden colour with the atmosphere but reasonably steady with the rings showing really nicely with the 4.7mm

Moon: Noticed quite a bit of difference from yesterday. Must be very very close to 100% illuminated. Better view now on the eastern side as well as the mountainous area to the south.

Well that was about it packing up at 1ish. It was starting to get a touch cold and damp but nowhere thankfully near as cold and damp as the previous night! I quite enjoyed the session and breaking in to a few doubles. I may well return and do more of these on a Moony night!

[Dave In Vermont]

A very successful nights' work - my congratulations, Dave! I, too, am quite fond of colorful double-stars. And always a favorite to show to people who happen by when I'm set-up in a public-park. Along with an informal talk about how they work as binary systems, and that they are more commonplace than our solitary single-star - the Sun.

In orbit about a G5III,

Dave

[wookie1965]

Some good doubles there well done I will be trying a few of them when get my mount back with my Tal 100rs. 

[Davesellars]

Thanks!   The weather is no cooperating at the moment to get back out there...   Now we're back in to no Moon at least before 1am.  Typical!