Some Doubles, Galaxies, Globulars

[cloudsweeper]

9.40pm Wednesday – 8SE Cat on GoTo - only the orange Arcturus on show initially – quite a bit of cloud about.  Shortly afterwards, aligned on Regulus and Denebola.

78/Iota Leo – the 11^th mag component 5.5 arcmin away was very easy to see (at 11 o’clock) of course at x48, but splitting the 4^th & 6^th mag components (2.1 arcsec) proved difficult going in steps to x203 owing to the brightness of the primary, and poor seeing giving a blurry image.  Not a great start.

54 Leo – triple, visual double – 4^th & 6^th mags, 6.4 arcsec – close but clear split at x48, fainter companion at 3 o’clock – target star part of a roughly equilateral triangle (see sketch).

Σ1615 Coma Berenices – triple, visual double – 7^th & 8^th mags, 27 arcsec – easy, well separated at x48, fainter component at 3 o’clock.

OΣ259 Com – binary - 8^th mag, 39 arcsec – (via SAO 082666) – easy, very well separated, nicely matched, secondary at 1 o’clock.

 Σ1678 Com – binary – 7^th mag, 37 arcsec – also easy and well separated, matched, sec at about 12 0’clock.  This one is in Sissy Haas, but not CDSA.  Nice though it is, it is not a physical double.

Having concentrated on doubles and the Moon over many recent sessions, I decided to finish with some different (although familiar) targets:

M84 & M86 Galaxies, Leo, in Markarian’s Chain – pale and fuzzy, but pleasingly apparent, in spite of a lightish sky and various sources of light trespass.  M86 was slightly larger.

M53 Globular Cluster, Coma Berenices – close matched pair of stars to south for easy identification – little more than a fuzz.

M5 Rose (Globular) Cluster,  Serpens – larger, brighter, with a few peripheral stars made out.

A very pleasing 1.25 hours.

Doug.

[wookie1965]

Doug, 

             Great haul there I will have to check my lists to see if I have got those doubles great read. 

One thing where did you get the print outs from please. 

Paul 

[cloudsweeper]

49 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

Doug, 

             Great haul there I will have to check my lists to see if I have got those doubles great read. 

One thing where did you get the print outs from please. 

Paul 

Thanks Paul!  I keep lists (from various sources) arranged by constellation, so I can check doubles (and other) targets I want to see, and have already done.  Revisiting favourites is good, but I also like to break new ground!

Print-out - if you mean the "grid" I used for the sketch, I just generated a basic table in Word, then fiddled around with cell/column/row sizes.  There is probably also a way to include a neat circle, but I just drew round something for that, then ran off copies.

Hope you're feeling better!

Doug.

 

[wookie1965]

Thanks Doug, 

                           Still in severe pain so I am observing vicariously through other people's reports. 

Not had the weather anyway and the forecast is terrible even so I would have to ask my son set up for me anyway. 

When I can sit up properly I will write a few lists for when I do go out try to keep them in a small area so I can just sit in one place and view without getting up and down. 

Thank you for posting really enjoy reading your reports. 

Paul