40 Eridani

[Skipjack]

Leonard Nimoy passed away 27th of february 2015, and this image is taken a few weeks after his passing, showing the stars of Spocks home world. I believe North is to the upper left.

I am absolutely not a photographer, nor am I any image enhancer of sorts - so this image below does not have any quality to it what so ever. I just pointed and shot with a DSLR.

The magnitudes are reported as 4.4, 9.5 and 11.2.

Sissy Haas has separation 80" in the large gap A-BC, and 3" in the smaller gap B-C in her book. I did not measure anything at the time of the observation. 

 

I hope to be able to observe this system again now in early march to see if any movement is noticable. Have read that the orbital period of C in respect of A is 230 years, so theoretically a slight change of about 5 degrees would be possible to detect. 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by Skipjack

[Mr Spock]

It's a nice system isn't it. Certainly fires the imagination.

I wish more people would image double stars. I'd like to do it myself but the whole astrophotography voodoo does my head in. I'll stick to eyepieces 

[Alan White]

10 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

I'd like to do it myself but the whole astrophotography voodoo does my head in. I'll stick to eyepieces 

Thoroughly agree on this,
I enjoy looking at others hard graft and prefer to spend my time looking at the wonders around us.
 

Interesting story to your image @Skipjack and thank you for sharing it.

I love double stars, challenging and a pleasure to look at for asthetic reasons a lot of the time.

 

[Skipjack]

Thank you both. Yeah, I also prefer my eye to the EP rather than attaching a camera. I simply don't have the patience to turn knobs and pull levers in an image processing software.

As my astro friend summarized it:

"If I go Nepal to see Mt. Everest, I look at it with my eyes to truly experience the mountain. I don't stay at the hotel just buying postcards of it."

 

True his words.