Delta Cygni

[Sunshine]

Last weekend while on a doubles tour (of you haven’t heard I just love doubles) I made a point to observe Delta Cygni. Seeing was pretty bad, a thin haze coupled with record daytime heat made for shimmering morphing star images. Despite seeing, I was easily able to resolve this double to the point where no matter how much the parent star shimmered, I could see the gap between its pup perfectly clearly the entire time while observing it. It seems this is a challenging double for small scopes, I expected to be foiled on a night of bad seeing but it wasn’t the case, I was surprised at the fact I could maintain a clear split in such conditions. 
 

 

[John]

Delta Cygni can be challenging if the seeing is mediocre and the aperture small. Quite a difference in brightness between the components makes the 2.8 arc second gap between them seem tougher to prize apart than would be the case for an evenly matched pair.

Your Tak 102 is made for such challenges though, even if the conditions are a bit sub-par

 

[Nik271]

I use Delta Cyg as a test of seeing when observing in summer with my 120mm small Mak.  It's my second test, after the Double Double (which is a much easier one), then I go for either Delta Cyg or Izar to see if there is any point trying to split close doubles. The nice thing about these is you can split them  even in the summer twilight, as the stars can be seen in the finder and are close to naked eye Vega, Deneb and Arcturus which appear just an hour after sunset.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Nik271

[John]

Delta Cygni nicely split tonight with my ED120 at 225x through to a rather silly 450x. Pi Aquliae likewise. So steady seeing but cloud cover may well muck things up soon 

Edited August 22, 2021 by John

[NGC 1502]

On 22/08/2021 at 22:23, John said:

Delta Cygni nicely split tonight with my ED120 at 225x through to a rather silly 450x. Pi Aquliae likewise. So steady seeing but cloud cover may well muck things up soon 

Indeed 450x sounds very high but I’ve found on many occasions tight doubles are often split using “silly high” mag. I have a 2.5mm Vixen LV that I use for that.  Of course a barlow could also be employed to get there.

I bought the original version Vixen LV in 2020 from an online dealer who claimed “new old stock”. Given how long ago original version LVs went out of production I was sceptical about “new old stock”. But when it arrived the boxed ultra minty EP must have been the very last of the last of that series to be bought 👍

The 2.5mm gives 480x with my 10” Dob. The 45 degree apparent field makes hand tracking difficult!

Ed.

[Sunshine]

480x with 45 degree AFOV on a dob, wow, you should be able to catch a fly with chopsticks!