Burnham 1 (Cassiopeia's Trapezium?)

[Spile]

A bright moon has encouraged me to take a look at the famous "W"  and a few doubles, despite it being almost at the zenith at the moment.

Some lovely, high scoring (4* or better) examples (Achird, Eta, STF 163, Iota, Sigma) with one 5* (STF 3053) and a real tight one (Sigma) that required 150x to split it.

Burnham 1 proved a little more difficult (others have reported the same) to find however. A combination of Stellarium screen shots and an asterism allowed me to get it last night and I found it a a fascinating object.

Made up of four almost equally bright (Mag 8.6 to 9.7) white stars in a right angled triangle. It reminded me of the Trapezium in Orion but even closer and not as bright. I had to use the Barlow with my Zoom and around 200x to get a good view. A, C and D were clear but I was not convinced about B so I'll have another go. With averted vision and backing down on he magnification, despite a full moon, I was just able to make out NGC 281 (Pacman Nebula) that surrounds Burnham 1.

Finding Burham 1

Put Achird in the Teldrad/finder and move to an imaginary third point of a triangle with Shedar.

Look for the distinctive snakelike arc of stars with a V at the "head". Use this asterism as it points to the brighter star - Burnham 1.

The triangle sketch...

[Jiggy 67]

An interesting one this, these are my obs recorded back in February 2021….

Double, possibly triple star. Quite a faint star with 8mm zoom (x112 mag) but can be seen as a very tight double. 
Vixen 4mm (x225 mag) shows it faint and blurry with an equally matched white companion very close and a possible 3rd star very faint and equally close forming a tight triangle…..

I got it with a 4 inch frac so a bigger aperture should show it really well. SkySafari records many more components to the system 

[MylesGibson]

I haven't seen this one before. Another one to add to the "to see" list!