4 Nice Doubles Near Denebola; 1 Galaxy

[cloudsweeper]

8.30 Saturday, still, clear, lovely 127 long focus frac ready waiting, complete with homemade adjustable counterweight.  Sirius and Venus were out, but partly obscured by trees.  Patience....

Next Procyon, Regulus, Algieba, then Denebola at last at 8.55.  This was to be my hopping off point for the planned targets.

90 Leo, visual triple, two closely matched, one fainter, 3.5" and 64".  At x33 - a bright spot and a fainter one, well separated, to the west.  Up to x80 and the bright one split into two, the lower one at about 7 o'clock.  Beautiful sharp points, more so than in other 'scopes I feel.

88 Leo, visual double, not matched, 15".  Easy split at x80, faint companion at 12 o'clock.

Sigma 1565, binary, not well matched, 22".  Easy split at x33, fainter companion at 11 o'clock.  From there, a hop east to:

93 Leo, visual double, not matched, 75".  Very easy at x33, fainter companion at 1 o'clock.

Denebola is in a line of three, ending with Beta 603, a double with 1" nominal separation.  x300 should have split it, but I didn't spot the fainter secondary as the pair skimmed rapidly across the view.  

Across to Chertan then down to the region of the Leo Triplet of Galaxies.  On this occasion I only picked up the brightest one - M66, a north-south elongated patch with AV at x60.

Two hours of pleasure from the comfort of a stool, and ending with a very wet telescope!

Doug.

[domstar]

Great report. I've been around there looking at galaxies but apart from Algeiba, I haven't had the pleasure of doubles in Leo. I'm going to take a screenshot and tonight could well be the night, conditions allowing. I've been using CDSA constellation by constellation and it's so exciting ripping into a new one. Double stars have really given me the push that I needed since autumn. Just out of interest, is Regulus a splittable double or does the difference in brightness make it another Sirius or even Procyon?

[cloudsweeper]

9 minutes ago, domstar said:

Great report. I've been around there looking at galaxies but apart from Algeiba, I haven't had the pleasure of doubles in Leo. I'm going to take a screenshot and tonight could well be the night, conditions allowing. I've been using CDSA constellation by constellation and it's so exciting ripping into a new one. Double stars have really given me the push that I needed since autumn. Just out of interest, is Regulus a splittable double or does the difference in brightness make it another Sirius or even Procyon?

Thanks Dom.  Regulus is a triple (or more!), but a visual double.  Although the splittable components are very mismatched, they are readily seen on account of their large separation, nearly three moa.

Doug.