Covering The Angles

Hi guys and gals

Last evening four of us went down to Trooperstown, Michael, Gavin, Phil and myself, I had never met Gavin or Phil before and it was great to see them, it's always nice to meet and chat with new people. Taking advantage of some wonderfully clear transparent skies I delved into Triangulum to pull out the following doubles.

I'm describing them in their numerical order, not in the order I observed them.

STF 158: The last double that I observed on the night, and by far the most difficult. An orange-white pair of 8.5 & 9th mag stars that are very tight, with a separation of just 2.1 this is the extreme limit of what I can observe. Patience is required here, just waiting for that exact moment when the seeing got just a little better. I could see the elongated shape, but hand on heart, I cannot say with certainty that I split the pair, no darkness was seen between the stars, I'll put it down to a near miss.

STF 183: A nice easy split, again orange-white, the wide separation of 5.6 made this possible, at 7.5 & 8,5 the magnitudes were fairly bright and could bee seen with lower magnifications.

STF 197: Guess what? Yes, another orange-white pair, similar magnitudes to STF 183, the separation is very wide, 28.1 and therefore it is a doddle to split, if you know where to look for the secondary.

STF 219: A white pair this time, 8th & 9th magnitudes, again a nice wide separation of 11.6 ensures that despite the secondary being 9th magnitude, the split is easily achieved.

Iota Tri: A really nice pair of orange stars, the primary being a slightly darker orange. 5th & 6.5 magnitdues members and a nice 3.9 separation combine to make this a double worth hunting down, the highlight of the night.

STF 232: 7,5 magnitude stars and a separation of 6.5 are enough to make the split with ease, I could split them at x59 with no trouble, a pretty pair of eyes looking back.

STF 239: Back to orange-white again, a wide separation of 14 brings these 7th & 8th magnitude stars out of the night.

STF 246: Surprise, surprise, an orange-white combination, do all the orange stars like to congregate in the same area of the sky? Wide at 9.5 and bright at 7.5 & 8.5, an easy catch.

I finished the night just drifting around the sky, that was until my lens fogged up and then it was goodnight.

Perhaps when Mike Casey is next out I might ask him to swing his 8" Newtonian to STF 158, just to get the split.

As I stated, great to see new faces, so to speak, and it's so nice to see the Milky Way streaking across the sky.

Thanks for your time.

Paul

Great report Paul!

I really must get the binoculars, etc. dusted off and join you all some night down at Trooperstown.

John

skynotes wrote: Great report Paul!

I really must get the binoculars, etc. dusted off and join you all some night down at Trooperstown.

John

Hi John,

I took the following photo's using my Astrotrac and 550D.
The photo's are all 60Sec @ 6400 ISO. I had forgot to set the camera to raw so didn't bother trying to stack any of the images.
Still figuring it out but the light pollution is a problem, even down there .

Michael.

Nice images Michael, I really like Orion.

Can you explain why there appears to be flaring around the bright stars? What f stop were you using?

There's light pollution everywhere, unfortunately.

Paul

lunartic wrote: Nice images Michael, I really like Orion.

Can you explain why there appears to be flaring around the bright stars? What f stop were you using?

There's light pollution everywhere, unfortunately.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I can only assume that it is caused by light bouncing around inside the camera lens.
Perhaps those on the boards who know more about Canon lenses might be able to help.
I was using the stock lens at 18x magnification.

Michael.

I can only assume that it is caused by light bouncing around inside the camera lens.
Perhaps those on the boards who know more about Canon lenses might be able to help.
I was using the stock lens at 18x magnification.

Sounds plausible, like telescopes cameras come with pretty poor standard lenses, it's definitely worth spending some more money and going for one of Canon's L lenses, the glass you put in front of the camera is as important as the camera itself.

Paul