Cloud dodging doubles

[Paz]

I wasn't planning on going out last night as it is a week night, I was tired, and it was cloudy. Then the cloud thinned and it was staying warm so I gradually convinced myself what harm could it do putting the ST80 out for a quick look.

I went out at 10pm - it was not completely dark and I had the usual light pollution to contend with. As my eyes adjusted I realised there was a thin veil of cloud covering most of the sky with slightly thicker cloud in patches. It was good enough for doubles so I aligned my dot finder using Vega. My finding set up with the ST80 is just the dot finder and because there is nowhere to put a RACI fnder I use a RACI diagonal to make it easier to hop around. The last part of the set up is a Baader Mk4 Zoom so I can go from a field of nearly 3 degrees for finding up and zoom in up to 50x without any need for changing gear.

Vega is a slightly colourful and blobby given its brightness combined with the short achromatic scope and my astigmatism. I bring up the "best double stars" list in Sky Safari and set off, my approach being to give each one a go and then look up the details.

Zeta Lyrae - no double seen, it turns out the secondary is mag 15.8. I think that is a bit harsh to be in sky safari's best doubles list!

Epsilon Lyrae - E1 is a bar, E2 looks like it should split so I go and get  2.5x powermate and have a go. I do split it but it was a bit noisy. It is interesting how E1 is not much tighter (2.2" compared to 2.4")but was definitely not split) or even a peanut. In hindsight I think I had E2 centered most of the time, maybe that didn't help with E1. The rest of the session was without the powermate so only up to 50x.

Delta Lyrae - nothing seen - it turns out the seconday is mag 11.2 - it must be out of my reach.

M57 - I try to spot this in passing - I can see it very faintly in averted vision.

Beta Lyrae - very nice pair, quite wide. Mag 3.5/6.7. Around this magnitude the stars are looking very good. Bright enough to see easily but dim enough to be nice and clean with no CA.

The cloud thickens around Vega so I look around for another patch.

Cor Caroli - the best looking pair so far, with obvious colour. I was out recently with the C8 on doubles and struggled to see much colour in anything (although this wasn't on the list then) - but tonight with the ST80 colours are more apparent - especially oranges/yellows.

Cloud thickens here so I look around and Cygnus looks ok. I line up on Deneb. This area is the first place I ever looked in detail through a scope and the patter of stars towards NGC7000 is instantly recognisable.

I notice a close pair of stars nearby and zoom in - they turn out to be SAO49986/SAO49982 and look very good. Sky safari has them as a double  mag 9.5/9.5 and 40.4". They don't show in the Cambridge Double Star atlas but I think because they are too faint.

31 Cygni (Omnicron) - I thought I had split this but I was looking at SAO49338 which is unrelated. It turns out the secondary for 31 Cygni is magnitude 13.4 and out of reach. There are though some colorful stars in this area.

18 Cygni (Delta) - I couldn't see a pair of any sort - on looking at Sky Safari i see it is 2.9/6.3 and 2.8" so it would be quite tough. I looked again looking for a peanut or bar and having set my mind on a position angle I was confident about I checked back with Sky Safari. I was................wrong! Not split or seen in any way!

16 Cygni - super nice and a wide split. Mag 6/6.2 39.8". That kind of split and those magnitudes were perfect for the scope and conditions. The stars were nice and crisp, not too dim, and not to bright and noisy.

The cloud situation was getting worse and I thought it a good idea to end on a winner. Overall I was very happy with my lot.

[cotterless45]

Great report , this time of year you can kick off early with binaries. There's also some cracking carbon stars around ,

Nick.

[Pig]

Nice report Paz, sound like you had a great session 😀