Hercules 17/06/24

[Mr Spock]

Region    Hercules
    
Date    17/06/2024
Scope    Takahashi FC-100
Eyepieces    42mm LVW x19, 17mm LVW x44, 8mm LVW, x93, 5mm LVW x148, 3.5mm LVW x211
Conditions    Good seeing (no clean airy disks) and good transparency - mag 4.5 in the direction of Hercules
Note:    All PAs are rough estimates.
    
ζ Her    Tough. In moments of steady seeing a 'blob' in the right position (134°) seen on the primary's diffraction ring.
Σ 2098    Triple star, easy at x44, but better at x93
Σ 2095    Faint secondary at 160°, x93.
Σ 2120    Wide, orange pair, uneven. x93 and 230°.
δ Her    Wide, very uneven with a bright white primary. X93 and 290°.
LDS 994    Extremely wide uneven pair seen at x19. 300°.
S 686    Another very wide pair seen at x19. 340°.
β 44    A faint, almost even pair at x148. 350°.
Σ 2165    This was a surprise. I was expecting to see a double, with the third, wider companion being too faint - I usually bottom out at around 10.1 in my LP.
     But there it was at x93, mag 10.75, clear as anything at 200°. Secondary was at 60°.
 

[lunator]

Very nice report 😀

Hercules does have a very good selection of doubles 

[MalcolmM]

@Mr Spock (and anyone else!) could I ask how you select which double stars to look for please? I'm currently using a combination of Turn Left at Orion, an Anthology of Visual Double Stars, and an Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders. These don't have a huge selection per constellation, so I'm beginning to look at Toshimi Taki's Atlas of Double Stars (online and downloadable), which I'm liking, but it has vast numbers per constellaion.

Thanks, 

Malcolm 

[Mr Spock]

33 minutes ago, MalcolmM said:

could I ask how you select which double stars to look for please?

I use Cartes du Ceil fitted with the Washington Double Star catalogue. I arranged the zoom size and appearance to something I could print off. I have dozens of pages!

I then go though all the doubles on the chart in CdC and mark on the chart ones suitable for my scope. Any with a secondary at 10.0 and above (my LP won't let me go fainter), and use a colour code to give me an idea of separation; so yellow is over 30.0", green is 10.0" to 29.9", orange is 3.0" to 9.99", and red is 1.14" to 2.99".
I observe red and above with the 100mm and the brighter stars orange and above with the 60mm.

I then record them in a spreadsheet and tick off on the chart the ones I've seen.

I have larger, and fainter, selected areas for the 12".

 

[MalcolmM]

That's brilliant thanks. I shall look into that. I particularly like the idea of colour coding the separation. 

Malcolm 

[josefk]

I can imagine that is a pretty satisfying exercise in its own right @Mr Spock - the preparation part i mean. Cool process.