Six Doubles, Looking South

[cloudsweeper]

Using the 102S frac on Celestron GoTo, I had to aim low, and that leaves me the southern sky only!

7.00pm – sky quite light and clear, Jupiter low, aligned on him using the lovely new 17.5mm Morpheus (great look, feel, performance, big eye lens and plenty of eye relief for a glasses wearer – a fine EP). The Galilean moons showed up with the ‘scope, Io and Europa forming a short diagonal across the “usual” line.  Better view going from x34 to x67.  Mushy x150.  On to the doubles (GoTo [via SAO numbers] performing very well for each):

54 Sgr – (2)+1, 46” – still only Jupiter naked eye – easy split x34, faint companion at 1 o’clock, primary slightly orange.  Good start.

Beta Cap – (2)+(2)+1, 3.4 and 4.4 minutes, wide visual triple – very easy x34, fainter companion at 10 o’clock, faintest at 5 o’clock, with seen separations exactly as expected.   Very pleasing, the evening’s highlight!

S710 Sgr (South’s Catalogue) – 6.3” – no split x34, got it x67, fainter star right above.

Omicron Cap – 22” – easy split x34, fainter star at 8 o’clock.

Sigma 2325 (Sct, Scutum) – 12” – easy split x67, much fainter companion at 8 o’clock.

All going very well, so something tighter next:

Rho Cap – 1.6” – sky darker now, but more faint stars in the x34 / 2.22deg field anyway.  This one needed more mag – x200, diffraction rings came in and out of view, but no split – at x240, I believe I detected some up-down elongation, and that was the best I could do.  Low altitude, some thin cloud, a rising full Moon, and diffraction rings all contributed to the difficulties here.

All in all, a very successful two hour session, finishing with a quick look at Saturn and Titan.

Doug.