Doubles In The Shield; Gas Giants Below

[cloudsweeper]

8.50pm, clear sky, Jupiter just emerging from behind houses, low, east of south.  Figuring it would be hard to get a starting point for hopping in the sky due to few clear stars, I decided to use the Celestron 8SE's GoTo mount with the 102S frac, making sure I was only aiming fairly low on account of the length of the OTA.  With Scutum (the Shield) being low in the south, this was easily achieved.

Jupiter looked good as usual - two belts, four moons.  I aligned on him at 9.10.  So, to the Scutum doubles:

[Planetarium/handset references – SAO 142290, 161569, 161805.]

Sigma2313, 5.7" separation.  Going from x20 to x100, got a good split - faint secondary at 6 o'clock.

Sigma2325, 12" separation.  Same mag, good split, very faint secondary at 8 o'clock.

Sigma2373, 4.4" separation.  This star was in a pleasing field, at the apex of a group resembling a small head of Taurus.  Same mag again, saw faint secondary at 11 o'clock.

A good run, but further targets were stopped by cloud.  Saturn was below the bank of cloud, so I finished at 10.20 with a quick look at him.  Rings very open.

My first decent session in many weeks - good to get some action again!

Doug.

[Knighty2112]

Nice work Doug. Not done any doubles work for a while, so need to remedy that soon. Was out last night from 1am to 2:30am viewing Mars, which was much higher than I expected it. Saw the south polar cap easily with the Mars filter attached, and some fine subtle details on Mars too when seeing clicked in. Packed my scopes away, only to notice then Venus just popping over the roof tops blazing away, so snuck a look with  binos  only. 

[cloudsweeper]

7 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

Nice work Doug. Not done any doubles work for a while, so need to remedy that soon. Was out last night from 1am to 2:30am viewing Mars, which was much higher than I expected it. Saw the south polar cap easily with the Mars filter attached, and some fine subtle details on Mars too when seeing clicked in. Packed my scopes away, only to notice then Venus just popping over the roof tops blazing away, so snuck a look with  binos  only. 

Thanks for the response Gus - much appreciated!  You've done better than me with Mars - only managed a bit of albedo difference, and recently observed it with gibbous apparition.

Scutum isn't a great hunting ground for doubles (only about half a dozen viewable examples), but these weren't as easy as I'd hoped, what with their faint companions and poor sky.  

Doug.