Good day to you all, amateur astronomers.
I spent a 2nd Good Friday evening in a row with my 6.2" apochromatic refractor for 2 hours -just as I did last year.
1. The first item on the agenda was the giant planet Jupiter. Its moons and the 3 red stars all near it. Callisto was way out west and Europa was quite close to Jupiter's east. However a little west of Jupiter was the pairing of Ganymede and Io lovely and tight at only 40X in a 28mm 2" eyepiece. But I drew an imaginary line westwards from Io, Ganymede through Callisto and I came to red star FZ Cancri. It is an M class star and it looked like a 5th moon!
2. Also in the same field of view of Jupiter at 40X was variable carbon star X Cancri. I estimated its magnitude as +6.3. Its orange red hue was excellent. It is now only 2 degrees from the big fella. (Jupiter reaches stationary point next Wednesday).
3. In my guidescope at 11X, I kept Jupiter at the bottom of the 6 degrees field of view and I could fit the planet and the 3rd red star T Cancri. It is much fainter than X Cancri with an estimated +8.2 magnitude in my opinion.
4. But what was my greatest achievement last night was splitting an extremely tight double star Stt 186 -otherwise known as Otto Struve 186 in Burnham's Handbook. According to the website stelledoppie.goaction.it, this star has precisely 1 arc second separation. Component A is 7.7 and B is 7.9. It is not far from double orange -blue star Iota Cancri. I needed 320X to split Stt 186 at first -but I was greatly impressed when I separated him with my trusty 4mm TMB eyepiece which gives 280X. The gap was a tiny hairline crack between A and B and the sight was very clean considering quite a few passing clouds . Both are white in colour and the PA is 74 degrees. Perhaps someone else has split this beauty in the past.
5. I called it a night after I observed M44, double star 24 Cancri and observing the GRS on Jupiter at 22.30 local time.
Did anyone else get out on Good Friday night with their scopes?
Thank you for reading.
Clear skies all,
Aubrey.
  