The tiniest of stars, can you see?

[Sunshine]

A dark and clear night it was, last night, there were no mosquitoes and my neighbors switched off their string lights when I fired off a text. My targets were doubles which were all fantastic especially Alberio, Alia, and Zeta Her was easily split with a nice gap between the two at 300x. But soon I became distracted with another challenge, spotting and identifying the faintest and most tiniest of stars in the heart of the double cluster. Stars so faint and tiny they were at the very limits of what my eyes could see. Identifying these stars became an issue, surely they are catalogued, no? zooming in on skysafari was futile as only a few stars are displayed and whatever other online resource I tried did not show these stars, I was at a roadblock. How to identify them I do not know, I enjoy looking at faint stars but I would like to be able to cross reference some sort of chart, are there any? maybe some of you can point me in the right direction. 

Edited August 5 by Sunshine

[Stu]

That is a ‘sport’ which I’ve played on many occasions and one I love. Those tiny stars are beautiful to observe. I’ve never tried to identify them though.

I have SkySafari 7 Pro with the additional star databases and I’ve found one down to mag 14.5 in the DC. Any idea how faint you’ve gone?

I think the SIMBAD database might be worth exploring for this though, I’ve seen that referenced quite a lot.

[John]

I enjoy playing "how faint can you see ?" as well. With M57 well placed currently it's not a bad place to play this game:

I'm often surprised at how smaller aperture scopes can still show that mag 13 star. The faintest I've managed is mag 14.7 with my old 12 inch dob. I've yet to convincingly spot the central star of M57 though.

 

[Mr Spock]

Cartes du Ciel has everything you could ever want. You can add loads of catalogues to it.

[Sunshine]

4 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Cartes du Ciel has everything you could ever want. You can add loads of catalogues to it.

Thanks! is this an app? or a program for computers, I will have a look.

[Mr Spock]

2 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Thanks! is this an app? or a program for computers, I will have a look.

Computer https://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/start

[Xilman]

Total overkill (but you can never have too much overkill) Gaia goes down to roughly 21s magnitude.

AladinLite with the DSS images, also goes down to roughly 21st magnitude and can overlay the Gaia catalogue.

Filling in the details is left as an exercise.  I have already given you easily enough information to fill in the gaps if you are sufficiently interested and know how to use a search engine.

 

[Emperor!Takahashi!]

If you listen closely, you can hear them say, "If you name me, you negate me."

[John]

One of the tiniest stars that can be seen is Sirius B, AKA "The Pup Star". It's believed to be smaller than the Earth.

[Sunshine]

34 minutes ago, John said:

One of the tiniest stars that can be seen is Sirius B, AKA "The Pup Star". It's believed to be smaller than the Earth.

Interesting! I was under the impression it takes a body much larger than earth to ignite fusion, I will have a look into it.

[Mr Spock]

15 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Interesting! I was under the impression it takes a body much larger than earth to ignite fusion, I will have a look into it.

It's a white dwarf. Previously it was a red giant which has collapsed and shed its outer layer, leaving a condensed interior.

[lunator]

Sirius B has a mas similar to the Sun but it's actual size is 92% that of the earth. As Mr Spocks says it's a white dwarf and fusion has long since finished.

Cheers

Ian

[Skipjack]

Interesting post. Nice project! When you say tiniest star, I am assuming it's physical size. As someone mentioned white dwarfs and some red dwarfs should be the most common to observe for us amateurs. They are usually high proper motion stars to my knowledge, which makes them interesting over a period of a decade or two. I recall having observed Lalande 21185, Groombridge 1830, Barnads Star and 61 Cygni to mention a few. Which is the smallest of these I do not know. 

 

Edit: I now realize you specifically asking about the stars in the Double Cluster. Sorry.

Edited August 13 by Skipjack
Typo

[Sunshine]

1 hour ago, Skipjack said:

Interesting post. Nice project! When you say tiniest star, I am assuming it's physical size. As someone mentioned white dwarfs and some red dwarfs should be the most common to observe for us amateurs. They are usually high proper motion stars to my knowledge, which makes them interesting over a period of a decade or two. I recall having observed Lalande 21185, Groombridge 1830, Barnads Star and 61 Cygni to mention a few. Which is the smallest of these I do not know. 

 

Edit: I now realize you specifically asking about the stars in the Double Cluster. Sorry.

When I say tiniest I mean apparent size and magnitude at the eyepice, not necessarily actual physical size of a star.

[John]

On 13/08/2024 at 14:52, Sunshine said:

When I say tiniest I mean apparent size and magnitude at the eyepice, not necessarily actual physical size of a star.

The apparent size of the airy disk is determined by the aperture of the scope. 

[Sunshine]

5 hours ago, John said:

The apparent size of the airy disk is determined by the aperture of the scope. 

The faintest stars which I can make out with my scope, given its 128mm aperture.

[globular]

21 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

The faintest stars which I can make out with my scope, given its 128mm aperture.

At last, a thread title we can all rally around 🤣

[Xilman]

Depends enormously on your skies, eyesight and amount of practice you have had.

Absolutely everyone can add a magnitude to their limit with practice. Truly experienced variable star observers can see at least two magnitudes fainter than newbies.

I had the benefit (?) of catching measles when a small boy. It left me with permanently light-sensitive eyes so I have perhaps a 0.5 magnitude start on the typical member of the population.

[apaulo]

Have tried going into sky safari settings and adjusting the star magnatude , im not sure how high it will go, have never needed to so far.