AN's Double Star of the month - Rigel

[chiltonstar]

Rigel (Beta Orionis) is AN's November "double star of the month". I always take a glance at this on the way past if the seeing is good enough and Orion high enough above the horizon.

Last night, the separation was brilliantly clear with 4 or 5 tightly packed diffraction rings visible around the primary star, and its little secondary well clear of the primary. At low mags, the secondary was almost overwhelmed by the very bright primary, but above x200 with the 180 Mak, the separation from the fuzz around the primary is complete. Best view at x270 with a Baader Ortho. It was too wet to use my camera for an image (I feared for the laptop), so I made a brief (and very poor) sketch instead. The rings were tightly packed and difficult to draw.

As the night air cleared a bit, I looked at a few of the more challenging areas of Orion - it was nice to see the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) as a bright fuzzy patch at x70, and a well resolved Trapezium (A,B,C,D,E & F). No G yet....

Chris

 

 

[alan potts]

Have a heart Chris it don't clear the walnut tree before 1.30 and I have to be up at 5.30. Nice double though and I always use it a tester for Sirius.

Alan

[domstar]

Very nice. Have you ever split Rigel in your refractors? I'm going to give it a try (it's easy to find at least) but I don't hold out much hope, especially with out slo-mo controls. It's beautiful in its own right, though.

[alan potts]

8 minutes ago, domstar said:

Very nice. Have you ever split Rigel in your refractors? I'm going to give it a try (it's easy to find at least) but I don't hold out much hope, especially with out slo-mo controls. It's beautiful in its own right, though.

You should be able to do it with your scope, I have with my 115mm many times.

[Moonshane]

It was an easy split in my 102mm f7 ed  last night at about 120x

[John]

25 minutes ago, Moonshane said:

It was an easy split in my 102mm f7 ed  last night at about 120x

Same here. The Tak 100 showed the companion really well even at 70-80x (I was zooming to see what the lowest power that would get the split would be). Also got the E & F Trapezium stars during a surprise clear patch late in the evening.

Al-Nitak (lowest belt star) also seemed a grand sight and a nice split last night.

 

[F15Rules]

9 hours ago, domstar said:

Very nice. Have you ever split Rigel in your refractors? I'm going to give it a try (it's easy to find at least) but I don't hold out much hope, especially with out slo-mo controls. It's beautiful in its own right, though.

I've often split Rigel in the past with an F15 80mm Kenko achromat, the companion is fairly bright (about mag 7 I think), so unless seeing is very poor and with reasonable elevation it's easy enough..?

Dave

[chiltonstar]

6 hours ago, domstar said:

Very nice. Have you ever split Rigel in your refractors? I'm going to give it a try (it's easy to find at least) but I don't hold out much hope, especially with out slo-mo controls. It's beautiful in its own right, though.

As above, it does split quite nicely in my 80mm and 102mm refractors, although of course the companion star is much fainter and the Airy disks twice the size, so you don't have perhaps the "diamond pinpoint" effect to the same extent that you get with more aperture. 

Chris