One Step Beyond Sirius ....... Procyon

[John]

If you are getting bored of splitting Sirius night after night, you might find Alpha Canis Minoris, better known as Procyon, of interest.

It's higher in the sky than Sirius but the separation between the two component stars is less than half that of Sirius A and B at 4.7 arc seconds. That would be a relatively simple split for most scopes of course but, as with Sirius, there is a major difference in brightness between Procyon A and Procyon B which adds very substantially to the challenge - Procyon A has an apparent magnitude of .38 whereas Procyon B shines dimly at around magnitude 10.8.

So this is a very, very, very difficult double to split. But, hey, we like a challenge

Here are excellent images of Sirius A & B and Procyon A & B taken around a month ago by Tiziano Olivetti based in Tailand using a superb quality 20 inch scope (told you it was difficult !!!):

Edited April 3, 2021 by John

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Nice John. I tried this weeks back. In a city with a 4" a waste of time given the magnitude of the B star. I can't help trying though!

The pics are a nice find. 👍

 

[Waddensky]

Oof! A challenge indeed. B was only confirmed visually in 1896 with a 36 inch refractor. The smallest aperture I could find that was able to split Procyon visually is an 18 inch binodob. Sounds like mission impossible from the Dutch mountains with the usual seeing and your average scope 😉.

[Sunshine]

This sounds like a futile task with my 4" frac but, what the heck, the worst that can happen is I end up cross eyed trying.

[John]

I've tried a couple of times with my 12 inch scope but with no joy at all so far

There is no harm in trying though

[Pixies]

@John, I'm sure you are trying to drive some members to drink!

[John]

Well I got Sirius B reasonably easily earlier at 221x with my 12 inch dobsonian. No joy with Procyon B though even at 400x plus. Not really surprised to be honest

 

 

Edited April 3, 2021 by John

[Jiggy 67]

If only I knew, I use Procyon as my second alignment star, I could have killed two birds with one stone!!.....easy....no problem.....right??? 😀

[Space Hopper]

Still no joy with Sirius i'm afraid and it looks as though it will be another failure this apparition 😒

Had a mono session with a well cooled down Tec140FL , one of those fancy Baader diagonals and a Docter 12.5mm UWA with and without a TV Powermate.

Seeing seemed reasonable to me tonight but after about 30 mins of trying i gave up and moved on to other things.

I'm pretty sure my optical gear was performing optimally and the TEC is a pretty formidable  scope at splitting doubles. 

However Sirius is a different animal. And is often looking like a Kaleidoscope on a poor night.

Sadly i'm concluding my eyesight (53 years and changing for the worse) is simply not up to it.  Maybe i should have 'got serious about Sirius' 30 years earlier....!!! 🙃

 

[Pixies]

I was observing some doubles in Leo tonight. One I tried was Kappa Leonis - after it was mentioned earlier today by a couple of posters.

Anyway. The 2.2 arcsecond split looked easily doable, but the magnitude difference got me. +4.46 and +9.70. Not quite the same difference as Sirius or Procyon, but a little tighter.

[John]

3 minutes ago, Pixies said:

I was observing some doubles in Leo tonight. One I tried was Kappa Leonis - after it was mentioned earlier today by a couple of posters.

Anyway. The 2.2 arcsecond split looked easily doable, but the magnitude difference got me. +4.46 and +9.70. Not quite the same difference as Sirius or Procyon, but a little tighter.

Still a big difference though and that makes it difficult to split. Later in the year, try Dela Cygni. The magnitudes there are 2.8 and 6.3 and the separation 2.7 arc seconds. It really can be quite hard to split because of that magnitude difference.

 

[Pixies]

11 minutes ago, John said:

Still a big difference though and that makes it difficult to split. Later in the year, try Dela Cygni. The magnitudes there are 2.8 and 6.3 and the separation 2.7 arc seconds. It really can be quite hard to split because of that magnitude difference.

 

I also tried Iota Leonis. Magnitude difference: +3.96 and +11.06 and a distance of 2.3 arcseconds. This one I think I got. The small faint secondary trailing in the wake of the main star. 

[John]

28 minutes ago, Pixies said:

I also tried Iota Leonis. Magnitude difference: +3.96 and +11.06 and a distance of 2.3 arcseconds. This one I think I got. The small faint secondary trailing in the wake of the main star. 

Yep - that's a nice one in my 100mm refractor

 

[chiltonstar]

21 hours ago, John said:

I've tried a couple of times with my 12 inch scope but with no joy at all so far

There is no harm in trying though

Indeed not - always an interesting challenge, even for those of us with small scopes which are not capable of splitting the pair!

I noticed last night that Procyon was barely twinkling, so I got my 180 Mak out and had a look to see what it actually looked like. The seeing was excellent++, so there was a stable diffraction pattern visible even at x450, with 5 rings or so as though some celestial arachnid had been at work . As the scope cooled, there were three radial bright zones which gave artefacts on the outer diff rings which looked like secondaries and could have been mistaken for them except for the fact there were three of them and they were symmetrical at 120 degrees. These disappeared after 10 minutes leaving just one bright spot at ca. PA 270 degrees which clearly wasn't Procyon B as the PA was wrong, but presumably caused by a smear on the optics or whatever. I can see how folk with small scopes often report having seen Procyon B even when it isn't technically possible.

Chris

[Mr Spock]

That's a real challenge. It's one I've never seen. Maybe someday...

[Nik271]

7 hours ago, Space Hopper said:

Still no joy with Sirius i'm afraid and it looks as though it will be another failure this apparition 😒

Had a mono session with a well cooled down Tec140FL , one of those fancy Baader diagonals and a Docter 12.5mm UWA with and without a TV Powermate.

Seeing seemed reasonable to me tonight but after about 30 mins of trying i gave up and moved on to other things.

I'm pretty sure my optical gear was performing optimally and the TEC is a pretty formidable  scope at splitting doubles. 

However Sirius is a different animal. And is often looking like a Kaleidoscope on a poor night.

Sadly i'm concluding my eyesight (53 years and changing for the worse) is simply not up to it.  Maybe i should have 'got serious about Sirius' 30 years earlier....!!! 🙃

 

It's getting too late for Sirus B in spring from my location, I get a lot of haze in the south in early evening and by the time the air is clearer then Sirius gets too low.

I'm happy to have seen Sirus B a couple of times this winter, the second time was easier because I knew exactly where to look. 

But I still have to wait for a steady long observation, so far it has been glimpses for a second or two and then it disappears again.

I think in the autumn in early morning will be the best time.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Nik271

[lunator]

Hi John

I am not aware that Procyon B has been seen using moderate sized scopes.

I did a quick calc using my resolution spreadsheet.

There are several guides to hard pairs are to split.

The resolution ratio must be equal to the deltaM for the pair to be resolved. The resolution ratio is Separation/(116/Aperture of the scope)

With the DeltaM of 10.4. 

The separation is approx 4.8"

The Bruce MacEvoy rule of thumb 10.4 = (4.8/(116/252))

So Procyon would require either a 250mm scope or magnification of x250. In my experience this rule is too optimistic for large DeltaM pairs.

Their are other calculations that are used

Chris Lord has a nomogram that looks that this and it can be simplified to the equation

7log(separation(116/aperture). So 10.4 = 7Log(4.8)/(116/D) D= 750 SO you woul need a 750mm scope of x750 mag.

My experience is closer to the formula 2.5+4Log

2.5+4Log(116/D) D= 2300

Or on a night of excellent seeing you can take the lamda number (Sep=(116/D) and divide by 2 and add 3.

This is a resolution chart based on a Treanor plot. Showing the calculated limits of the various investigations.

Procyon is the liitle blue diamond below the 10 line on the y-axis.

The Sirius diamond is from my observation a few years back - Sep. of 9.2" it is exactly on the 10 line for the y- axis and 20 for the x- axis.

This shows how much harder Procyon will be.

Cheers

Ian

[JeremyS]

According to the Anthology of Visual Double Stars (Argyle, Swan & James) “there is currently no one alive who has seen the companion of Procyon. The last person to do so was Charles Worley 1935 - 1997”

[alan potts]

I read you need a 36 inch scope to view this so there are some that have Dobs of this size but few and far between, I have tried it with my 18 inch but like everyone else no joy, Sirius is fairly easy from here on a good night but it is a good deal higher in the sky than the UK.

Alan

[Geoff Barnes]

Intrigue got the better of me this evening so I thought I would have a go at Procyon myself. 

With the SW 12 inch Dob I got the star nicely centred with tracking on and using the Morpheus 6.5mm (230x) I spent a good 20 minutes just gazing at it and systematically going around and around the airy disc trying to spot the elusive B star.  

The seeing wasn't the best with a bit of a breeze blowing and the main star was scintillating quite markedly, but every time my eye reached the region around 11-12 o'clock I was convinced there was something there. I certainly couldn't see a star at all, but within the scintillating fuzz surrounding Procyon I definitely felt there was something in there that wasn't evident at any other point around the disc. 

I hadn't done any homework beforehand so had no idea where the B star was, but after checking SkySafari afterwards it showed Procyon B was exactly where I had seen my "something" loitering in the sparkly fuzz so I'm calling it a success, even if I didn't actually see it. Would be good to have another go under excellent seeing conditions.  

[John]

16 minutes ago, Geoff Barnes said:

Intrigue got the better of me this evening so I thought I would have a go at Procyon myself. 

With the SW 12 inch Dob I got the star nicely centred with tracking on and using the Morpheus 6.5mm (230x) I spent a good 20 minutes just gazing at it and systematically going around and around the airy disc trying to spot the elusive B star.  

The seeing wasn't the best with a bit of a breeze blowing and the main star was scintillating quite markedly, but every time my eye reached the region around 11-12 o'clock I was convinced there was something there. I certainly couldn't see a star at all, but within the scintillating fuzz surrounding Procyon I definitely felt there was something in there that wasn't evident at any other point around the disc. 

I hadn't done any homework beforehand so had no idea where the B star was, but after checking SkySafari afterwards it showed Procyon B was exactly where I had seen my "something" loitering in the sparkly fuzz so I'm calling it a success, even if I didn't actually see it. Would be good to have another go under excellent seeing conditions.  

If you got it, this is a brilliant result Geoff

You are quite possibly the only living human who as achieved it !

Crack open a beer mate

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by John

[RobertI]

On 03/04/2021 at 03:21, John said:

If you are getting bored of splitting Sirius night after night

🤣🤣🤣

[Sunshine]

On 04/04/2021 at 09:55, JeremyS said:

According to the Anthology of Visual Double Stars (Argyle, Swan & James) “there is currently no one alive who has seen the companion of Procyon. The last person to do so was Charles Worley 1935 - 1997”

Ok well this is a whole other level of futile, if that's the case then why even mention this double at all? I may as well have been signaling aliens with a flashlight wearing tin foil on my head!

[John]

13 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Ok well this is a whole other level of futile, if that's the case then why even mention this double at all? I may as well have been signaling aliens with a flashlight wearing tin foil on my head!

To be honest with you, when I started the thread, I knew it was a very challenging double (more so that Sirius) but I did not know that it was THAT difficult.

 

[globular]

(checks how close to 1st April John started this thread) 🤔