Krol Sobieski's Protection

Hi folks

The skies last night were wonderfully clear and the transparency was fantastic, the best I've seen it in some time, even from my awfully light polluted back garden there were far more stars visible than normal, even Sagittarius, to the south, was prominent and it was the southern portion of the heavens that attracted my attention, initially.

Here's the list, hope you enjoy, and I hope they are all correct, I know that Mike and Aubrey will be keeping a keen eye on me. :laugh:

STF 2373: A tight pair consisting of a pale yellow primary with a white secondary. A magnification of 93 showed the pair nicely, at mags 7 & 8 and a separation of 4.4 I could just split them at X59. Delta Scuti makes good jumping off point for this double.

Delta Scuti: A similar yellow and white pair. There is a huge disparity in magnitudes, Delta is 4th mag and the companion is 10th mag. There is a huge separation between them of 52, and this really helps make the split.

STF 2391: Located close to the Wild Duck Cluster, this pair of white stars is an easy split, again there is a wide range in magnitudes, 6.5 & 9.5. Separated by 28 X59 was sufficient, the view improved with magnification and X93 framed them nicely, they sit in a busy area of the sky.

STF 2313: Alpha Scuti is the launch point for this light orange and white pair, magnitudes 7 & 8.5, combined with a separation of 4.4, made this a little tricky, I could split them with a magnification of 93, upping the magnification to X135 did nothing for the view. Their relative closeness in magnitudes helped immensely with the split.

STF 2337: This white pair of 8th & 9th magnitude stars were not a difficult pair to split, they are wide, with a separation of 16, with the secondary lying almost horizontal to the primary. An easy star hop, following a trail from Lambda.

STF 2325: Another white pair, south of Alpha, magnitudes 6 & 9 and a separation of 12, combine to make this split easy, visible at X59, though not obvious, X93 was the better option.

It was now time to move north, to the Hotel California, such a lovely place!

28 Aquilae: A deep yellow primary is the main thing of note, it's a wonderful tone, the companion is white. Magnitudes are 6 & 9 with a very wide separation of 59, a magnification of 59 was more than enough to show the pair.

STF 2510: Using 28 as a base I moved south to this pair of white stars, they are equal 8.5 magnitude members with a separation of 8.8, because of the similar magnitudes and the wide separation I could see this pair of eyes with ease at X59.

STT 370: Close by is this pair of light orange and white stars, very wide with a separation of 19 and magnitudes of 7.5 & 8, and easy split.

STF 2497: A nice pair of vivid yellow and white stars, shining at 7 & 8 mags they showed up very well at X59, they sit in a pretty empty part of space, this was a tricky star hop from the above doubles, and took a little time to get there.

STF 2489: Going back to 28, this time I moved north to grab this pair of white stars, there is a disparity of magnitudes, 6.5 & 9.5, the separation is not huge, 8.2, and this made the split more difficult, X93 achieved the task, X135 was not an improvement.

STT 4178: A lovely pair of vivid yellow and blue-white companions. Very wide at 89, the magnitudes are 5.5 & 7.5, quite a bright pair, I could split this pair using X29 and got the best view at X59, there are a number of fainter stars in the same field.

STF 2531: Residing close to Delta Scuti, this pair of white stars are fainter at 8 & 9.5 magnitudes, wide, with a separation of 31, and this helped with the split, sitting at the apex of three 7th & 8th magnitude stars, it was an easy catch.

STF 2532: One of the base stars of the same triangle, a nice orange primary is accompanied by a white secondary. Again, there is a wide range in the magnitudes, 6 & 10, the separation of 33 helped.

Apart from the doubles I got a look at the carbon star S Scuti, it is not an intense red colour, more of a mid tone red, I haven't seen many carbon stars and took the opportunity when it came along.

As a testament to the seeing, 10th magnitude stars were seen with ease, there have been nights when 9th mag. stars have been invisible. I'm sure that if I tried, 11th mag. stars would have been seen, at the zenith I believe that I could have pushed it further.

Thanks for your time.

Paul

Thanks for the excellent report Paul; sounds like you had a cracking session. In the absence of any observations of my own, I'm getting vicarious pleasure from your reports.

Mike

Thanks Mike, also, thanks for adding to my vocabulary, I've never heard the word vicarious before, I'll have to drop it into conversation whenever I can.

It was one of this exceptional nights that comes along rarely, and thankfully, I am still on holiday from work, so I could stay up that much later. It's great to be able to see parts of the sky that are normally unavailable.

Paul

Gosh, Paul -another marvellous list in Scutum and Aquila. I could see that Thursday night was clear. But Valerie always do our weekly shopping at Superquinn. The sky was completely clear by 10pm. I was too tired.
I have split 28 Aquilae, 5 Aquilae, 11 Aquilae, 15 Aquilae, 23 Aquilae, Pi Aquilae and 57 Aquilae.
In Scutum, the only ones I have split in the past were: Delta Scuti, Stf 2391, and H50.
Of course, M11 is superb.

Aubrey.