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Cassiopeia double stars

David Levi

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David Levi

David Levi

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Despite recently clocking up my one year observing anniversary I have never explored the constellation Cassiopeia, one of the most obvious constellations in the sky. Tonight therefore I took the opportunity with a break in the clouds to observe the Cassiopeia double stars (and multiple) as shown in the book Turn Left At Orion.

In book order, Iota Cassiopeiae away from the 'W' on a line from Delta Cas through Epsilon Cas was a nice tight three star system. Struve 163 not far from Epsilon Cas showed great colour variation between the orange primary star and the two fainter blue companions. While out at this end of the constellation I took a look at the two variable stars RZ and SU Cas. They are supposed to change magnitude by about a value of 1 over a period of two hours every couple of days. I'll have to look around to see if there is a timetable for this on the Internet as you'd need some patience otherwise just to keep looking. On to Eta Cas which is a bright pair with a lovely red secondary star. I've become quite adept at manually star hopping to find targets but Burnham 1 took a few minutes to find. It's a small target forming the corner of an equilateral triangle with Eta and Alpha Cas. Burnham 1 is a tight four star system. Star B is magnitude 9.3 and only 1.1" from the primary star. I think that I could see it with averted vision after staring at the system and letting it drift repeatedly across the eyepiece view. I don't think that I was imagining it. I couldn't see any nebulosity from the Pacman Nebula but didn't try a filter. A job for a dark sky site rather than my suburban back garden. Struve 3053, north of 10 Cas is a nice orange/blue pair. The last double on my list was Sigma Cas. This is a pleasing tight pair of blue stars.

The best views of these stars was at 125x magnification. Nice and crisp views. I went up to 200x to look at Burnham 1 but the gain in size was almost lost with slight fuzziness.

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Littleguy80

Littleguy80

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41 minutes ago, David Levi said:

You've read my mind Neil. The TLAO listed open clusters in Cassiopeia are next! It might be a while though with the unsettled weather we're getting at the moment.

I'm sure you won't have to wait too long :) The double cluster is close by if you haven't seen that yet

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David Levi

David Levi

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The double cluster in Perseus is superb. It's well positioned in the sky at the moment for my set up - not too high. I haven't been following any star/object catalogue and so I had to look up C14 - Caldwell 14. I have heard of the catalogue of course and was vaguely aware that it was compiled by Patrick Moore. Caldwell-Moore being his full surname. I was only familiar with the names NGC 869 and NGC 884 for the open clusters. C14 is a lot easier to say (and write) and so from now on if I have to use a number for the double cluster in Perseus that will be the one.

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