65 piscium

[CHRlS]

Hi,

I've downloaded a copy of the astronomical society double star list and thought I'd give it a try. I've already got stuck on the second star in the list.

The area around 65 piscium is rather sparce, both in the sky and in the star chart.

I started at Delta Andromedae and made a triangle using this star, Epsilon Andromedae and 28 Andromedae.

I then get confused with the orientation of the view I see through the scope compared to what I see on Stellarium.

I think I'm meant to go south from Delta down to the first brightish star seeable. 

Using a 130mm f5 reflector I was unable to split it, but I'm not sure it was the right star.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Zermelo]

I also observed 65 Psc on Friday.  Yes, Pisces is a bit devoid of waypoints if you're star-hopping, especially in brighter skies.

What scope are you using, and what finder(s) do you have?  I have a goto mount and RACI finder, and it's usually quite simple to match the starfield in the finder to a chart, unless I'm close to a bright moon. I'm not familiar with the app incarnation of Stellarium, but in SkySafari you can flip the chart E-W and N-S to match the view in your optical finder or scope.

If I had to star-hop then, yes, Delta Andromeda and straight down to the horizon, a little more than my finder's FOV.

[CHRlS]

3 hours ago, Zermelo said:

I also observed 65 Psc on Friday.  Yes, Pisces is a bit devoid of waypoints if you're star-hopping, especially in brighter skies.

What scope are you using, and what finder(s) do you have?  I have a goto mount and RACI finder, and it's usually quite simple to match the starfield in the finder to a chart, unless I'm close to a bright moon. I'm not familiar with the app incarnation of Stellarium, but in SkySafari you can flip the chart E-W and N-S to match the view in your optical finder or scope.

If I had to star-hop then, yes, Delta Andromeda and straight down to the horizon, a little more than my finder's FOV.

I'm using a heritage 130p and I was using the az gti mount as a manual mount. I'm used to using the goto but want to search manually as much as I can for this list of doubles. The finder is just a simple red dot finder. I guess using my 25mm would act as my finder? My sky is heavily affected by light pollution, hence the reason to do some double star observing.

In stellarium there is the option to flip horizontal, I'm guessing this is East and west. The other option is to flip vertical, so this would be north to south. If a newtonian view is rotated 180 degrees does that just mean it is flipped upside down?

What scope and finder did you use? Was it easily split?

 

 

[Zermelo]

25 minutes ago, CHRlS said:

If a newtonian view is rotated 180 degrees does that just mean it is flipped upside down?

Yes, a combination of horizontal and vertical flips is the same as a rotation of 180 degrees.

 

30 minutes ago, CHRlS said:

I guess using my 25mm would act as my finder?

I think the SW 25mm in the Heritage 130 should give you a true field of view of around 1.9 degrees.  That's not bad, but my 9x50 optical finder has a TFOV of around 5.5 degrees.  So you'll need to work a bit harder with a red dot and wide field eyepiece.

 

35 minutes ago, CHRlS said:

What scope and finder did you use? Was it easily split?

I was using a Skymax 127, so slightly less aperture than yours, but a much longer focal length, and so I get higher magnifications.
65 Psc is 4.3", and the components are fairly equal at +5.55 and +6.33, so even with the indifferent seeing it was quite an easy split at 9mm (x167), in both a Morpheus and Svbony 9-27mm zoom.  Finding it with goto was easy, it put me within 0.25 degrees.

I think doubles are great targets, especially in lighter skies.

[CHRlS]

@Zermelo I've just came back inside after splitting 65 piscium, aswell as a couple of others. The 9x50 findercope was the key to finding it pretty much instantly. It's definatley different to using a red dot finder!

[Zermelo]

3 hours ago, CHRlS said:

@Zermelo I've just came back inside after splitting 65 piscium, aswell as a couple of others. The 9x50 findercope was the key to finding it pretty much instantly. It's definatley different to using a red dot finder!

Excellent. Many people use a combination of red dot and optical finder. With Goto, I tend to use just the optical finder.

[CHRlS]

17 hours ago, Zermelo said:

Excellent. Many people use a combination of red dot and optical finder. With Goto, I tend to use just the optical finder.

I rely on goto a little too much. I realised I'd be using both a red dot finder and the findercope so I've bought a double findercope shoe.