Bright targets in the eastern sky tonight?

[Ags]

Looking towards a proper night of visual with my wonderful C6 and its little helper my ST80. Any suggestions for bright targets suitable for Bortle 8 skies? M3 and M57 work, but what else? Can anyone suggest some easy bright colorful doubles? Triples are also acceptable 😃

Edited April 10, 2020 by Ags

[Craney]

Double-double in Lyra.

[Ciaran Meier]

Here's  a few in Bootes...

17 Boo: Double Star. A B 4.5m 6.6m 13.5”

21 Boo: Double Star. A B 4.8m 7.4m 38.8”

51 Boo: Triple Star. Aa Ab 4.3m 0.0m 0.1” / A B 4.3 7.1 108.0”

36 Boo: Double Star. A B 2.6m 4.8m 3.4”

37 boo: Double Star. A B 4.8m 7.0m 6.7”

49 Boo: Double Star. A B 3.6m 7.9m 104.6”

Enjoy !!!

[Ags]

1 hour ago, Craney said:

Double-double in Lyra.

I've seen it many times, but forgot to put it on the list tonight!

[Ags]

Only a short session as Cor Caroli is near the zenith and it did my back in. Hopefully a night's rest will cure all!

Polaris - easy split. The companion seems brighter at 60x using my ES 24/68 than at 150x using my Speer Waler 10/82. It's not the first time I have noticed this and I don't understand it - with my small maks more magnification darkens the sky background and teases out faint stars, whereas with the C6 magnification seems to darken stars!

36 Boo - Izar - I had to use 150x magnification to resolve this one. The companion appears as a hot dot in the diffraction rings of the primary.

8 Boo - Muphrid - Either this one is very wide or I didn't split it (Google tells me I did split it but the companion is merely a line-of-sight coincidence). This star is 37 light years away, and is Arcturus' closest neighbor. A planet in the Muphrid system would see Arcturus as a magnitude -5.4 star - far brighter than Venus! Muphrid is a G class star about nine times as bright as the sun and very rich in non Hydrogen/Helium elements.

Double Double - this was quite low and over houses so the view was unsteady. In the moments of clear seeing the pairs were clearly split with dark sky between them, but most of the time each double was blurred together. I am reminded of the adage that larger aperture is more sensitive to seeing effects.

M3 - much brighter than in my 102mm Mak, but I still need averted vision to resolve the stars. 

Cor Caroli - I do enjoy this brilliant white pair, so easy to find too. 

On the equipment side I really enjoyed my Berleback Castor mount tonight - it seems smoother and more precise with a bigger load - I think the added weight of a C6 vs a Skymax 102 stabilizes it and the larger scope gives more leverage and makes precise motions easier. Clearly I need to upgrade the ST80 to something a little longer... And the side by side mounting was reasonably aligned without the need for tweaking.  The C6 can do doubles - it's not the ideal scope for the job (stars are not as sharp as a refractor and the diffraction rings are bright) but it is serviceable. 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Ags

[Ciaran Meier]

4 hours ago, Ags said:

8 Boo - Muphrid - Either this one is very wide or I didn't split it

DSO Planner gives the secondary at mag 10 with 113" of seperation.  Probably lost this one in the Bottle 8 sky. 

Hope that back of yours gets sorted. I have back problems and I find a bit of gentle stretching can help.  

Ciaran. 

[Ags]

Thanks, my back seems back to normal this morning.

Mag 10 is well within my reach - with a smaller scope I've seen moons of Saturn of similar magnitude. 113 seconds of separation sounds about right.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Ags