A serious double star challenge

OK, double star lovers. Here is a real double star challenge. Before I tell you about it though. Here is the list of the others I observed last night (23rd December). Because the Gibbous Moon was in Aries -I thought I would look for somein that constellation.

1. Gamma Arietis: split @ 40X.
2. Lambda Arietis: split @ 40X.
3. 1 Arietis: split @ 112X. (Gold and blue).

Lastly the big test of my 6.2" refractor: 10 Arietis: split @ 320X and 374X.
The magnitudes are: Component A is 5.8 and B is 7.9. PA is 346 degrees and the separation is 1.5". Component B is roughly in the 12 o'clock position if your north is up in your scope.
I have separated tighter doubles recently, but because of the magnitude difference, I could not split it even at 280X. Fortunately, I do have a Nagler 3.5mm and a 3mm Radian which did the job. No colours though.

One last thing I enjoyed last night at 22.25 was watching Ganymede disappearing behind Jupiter's North Polar Region live! Very nice indeed at 167X.

Aubrey.

flt158 wrote: Lastly the big test of my 6.2" refractor: 10 Arietis: split @ 320X and 374X.
The magnitudes are: Component A is 5.8 and B is 7.9. PA is 346 degrees and the separation is 1.5".
Aubrey.

Sorry Aubrey - is that a seperation of 1.5 minutes or seconds?

Seconds, my man. That is some scope you have. What aperture is it?

Aubrey.

I was rather hoping you had used a " by mistake and had meant '

Clearly not. I'm not a regular visual observer myself but that seperation is barely larger than the periodic error of a high end mount. I know a 6+ " refractor is a pretty rare beast - but it must be a pretty good performer to achieve that kind of feat.

The scope in my profile image is a C14. It's only used for astrophotography but will, on a good night, get down to mag 20. That makes it easy for me to capture the light curve of mag 15 of brighter asteroid.

Dave

Good stuff Aubrey. According to the 2012 version of the Washington double star catalogue, the separation of 10 Arietis is just 1.3", smaller than you indicated. Your scope continues to show how good an instrument it is. Have you tried epsilon Arietis, a very nice, almost equal binary with magnitudes 5.2 and 5.6 a separation of 1.4"? Should be a piece of cake with that monster refractor. Happy Christmas.

Mike.

Sorry, Dave, I didn't get back to you last night. It seemed www.irishastronomy.org went down after 10pm. However, that is a pity that your scope is only used for photography. Because to me, it is the perfect scope to split tight doubles such as 10 Arietis.
I am a huge fan of those Naglers I have. I do appear to head up to 320X quite regularly for close doubles.

Aubrey.