Does anyone image double stars?

[Alan White]

Something random popped into my head, I have to now venture to the dark side and ask......

Us visual guys and girls love double stars and the challenge of seeing and splitting them,
so for imagers, does anyone do this imaging?
 

[Graham Darke]

Yes I have done a little of this. Mostly stacked shortish exposures of 10 to 30 seconds but I am wanting to try the lucky imaging technique with video files. 

 

[Pete Presland]

I did Alberio quite a few years back, certainly not going to win any awards 🙂 

[Craney]

It's a good question to ask.     Imagers try to get a 'good shot'   ie....  variety of interest, texture, colour  etc .  Visual observers focus on the main event centred in the middle of their eyepiece.

Most doubles are going to be close and hence you limit the FOV and  consequently the surrounding star field.   Relative brightness may appear differently in an image as opposed to the visual due to the differing sensitivities of the eyeball  and the CCD.   Colour  perception, I imagine is a subjective thing to visual observers whereas  stacking, stretching, post processing can do all  manner of things to the 'colour' of a pixel.

If I were to image more doubles, I would chose nice wide, colourful pairs.......    like Albireo........

 

5x5 second LRGB   with a 150mm F4 Newtonian.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Craney

[chiltonstar]

I do quite a bit, eg Epsilon Lyrae:-

Chris

 

[newbie alert]

I took a shot on a limited session a few years ago 

Shot with my sct and dslr, obviously zoomed in 

[Alan White]

Thanks all, so not a nutty question to ask.
I did foresee it would be a negative answer as it will not make too exciting an image,
but an image it makes 👍

[fireballxl5]

not for a long time, but some of my first astro images were of double stars...

[glowingturnip]

I did Albireo a while back too, but seem to have lost it.

Here's one that a lot of us may have inadvertently got - Alnitak and its double:

[mikeDnight]

What a brilliant thing to do! I really hope this brings out of the woodwork those who have a secret passion for double stars, and yet love to image. And you've got the flame in your image just as an extra treat.  

I don't image, but I could see myself getting interested in this!

[lunator]

I have done this in the past.

Mostly Afocal . The advantage of doing it this way is the ability to vary the magnification. I think the closet pair I did were around 2-3".

Most of my images I posted in the double star section of the forum.

I plan to start again soon.

Cheers

Ian

[glowingturnip]

I've got another one actually - this one's a quintuple system in the middle of the Rosette:

 

I think we imagers tend to capture them by accident though - according to Wikipedia, about 1/3 of the stars in our galaxy are multiple systems, so I've captured hundreds of them  🙂