Are these stars or bubbles in my eyepiece in my shot of Polaris

[StarDuke82]

I was collimating my scope the other night and decided to take a photo of Alpha Umi aka Polaris as I was collimating my and not paying that much attention to the stars around it I can’t remember if they were stars located where these spots are or if my particular eyepiece might have bubbles, I have looked up images online and the star field around Polaris sort of looks like there should be stars located where these points of light are but I am not entirely sure.

[RT65CB-SWL]

Polaris does have two companion stars.

What ‘scope and eyepiece are/were you using? The two spots look to bright and irregular to be stars. Did you try with another eyepiece?

And from Wikipedia: “Although appearing to the naked eye as a single point of light, Polaris is a triple star system, composed of the primary, a yellow supergiant designated Polaris Aa, in orbit with a smaller companion, Polaris Ab; the pair is in a wider orbit with Polaris B. The outer pair AB were discovered in August 1779 by William Herschel, where the 'A' refers to what is now known to be the Aa/Ab pair.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris

[StarDuke82]

6 hours ago, RT65CB-SWL said:

Polaris does have two companion stars.

What ‘scope and eyepiece are/were you using? The two spots look to bright and irregular to be stars. Did you try with another eyepiece?

And from Wikipedia: “Although appearing to the naked eye as a single point of light, Polaris is a triple star system, composed of the primary, a yellow supergiant designated Polaris Aa, in orbit with a smaller companion, Polaris Ab; the pair is in a wider orbit with Polaris B. The outer pair AB were discovered in August 1779 by William Herschel, where the 'A' refers to what is now known to be the Aa/Ab pair.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris

I am in the same thinking that they are two bright and irregular to be stars, I used my 40mm Plossl eyepiece and I know sometimes they can have bubbles in the glue that bonds the different lenses together however I have never noticed this before and the bubbles or spots aren’t in my defocused image I took to check my collimation so I would think they would still show up there with a wider dispersion of

Edited May 5, 2023 by StarDuke82
Wider view of collimation shot

[StarDuke82]

On 05/05/2023 at 06:42, RT65CB-SWL said:

Polaris does have two companion stars.

What ‘scope and eyepiece are/were you using? The two spots look to bright and irregular to be stars. Did you try with another eyepiece?

And from Wikipedia: “Although appearing to the naked eye as a single point of light, Polaris is a triple star system, composed of the primary, a yellow supergiant designated Polaris Aa, in orbit with a smaller companion, Polaris Ab; the pair is in a wider orbit with Polaris B. The outer pair AB were discovered in August 1779 by William Herschel, where the 'A' refers to what is now known to be the Aa/Ab pair.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris

I don’t know now I looked at the images on the Wikipedia link and one of them is really close to the image I took just without the glare also didn’t mean to double post I couldn’t get the edit images function to work correctly.  My image is on top of course and the Wikipedia image is on bottom. 🤷🏻

[RT65CB-SWL]

Nice images and your collimation is spot on too.  (pun unintended. )

[StarDuke82]

On 06/05/2023 at 14:17, RT65CB-SWL said:

Nice images and your collimation is spot on too.  (pun unintended. )

Thank you very much 🤣 and forgive the late response there have been a few nice nights where the clouds have broke and I have been out under the stars with my scope, even got a bit of time in tonight before dew clouds ran me indoors.

[Agerskov]

The two smaller stars you have on your image are the mag. 10.6 star Gaia DR2 576400455260221312 for the one closed to Polaris and the mag 9.8 star SAO 270 a.k.a. Gaia DR2 576393411513868160 furthest away.

The image from your telescope is not orientated like you looked at Polaris without aid so this is why the star in the middle is above the line between Polaris and SAO 270 and on the Wikipedia image beneath the line.