doubles with Katrina (Blue Mountains)

After watching my Zip movie, I took a peek outside. Still lots of cloud, particularly over the horizons. Saw a meteor, ironically. Still I waffled. Phil said he was going to bed.

Instruments: Celestron 14-inch SCT, Tele Vue 101 refractor
Mount: Paramount ME
Method: Go To

I went to the loo and thought, I've come all this way... I changed into anti-mosquito wear and headed to the observing pad. Millie, Katrina, and Fred were viewing the whole sky and sharing Millie's binoculars. They reported seeing 5 meteors. We talked for a while about the paths or direction they would assume depending on the radiant.

I lay on one of the picnic tables for a while. Lyra overhead. Hercules just past the meridian. Love my new bifocals. But they're no good for whole-sky-on-the-picnic-table viewing... At times, it was hard to tell cloud from Milky Way and visa versa. The Moon, almost at Third Quarter, was washing everything out.

I grabbed my crappy Bushnell binoculars from my car and tried to spot moons around Jupiter. I could just barely see one to the left (actually, both Europa and Io were there) and two to the right (Ganymede and Callisto)... Challenging without a tripod.

Seemed warmer tonight (19). Humidity not as high (78).

Fred retired to his MacBook and Millie trundled off. Tried to gauge Katrina's interest... I decided to open the GBO. Certainly we would not get rain any time soon... Too bad Kiron and crew were all asleep. But then, they needed to get an early start tomorrow.

I offered to Katrina that she practice. She was keen.

Helped Katrina with GBO roof opening and flying the Paramount ME. I set up an account on the Dell laptop. Loaded a sky file with TPoint. Helped her get used to the software. We looked at various objects including Jupiter, the Double Double, ζ (zeta) Lyrae, and (Struve) Σ2349.

The Moon was bright but the clouds were slowly dissipating.

We could not see the red spot on Jupiter. Seeing was really bad. I asked if she wanted to view some double or multiple stars. She said she had a calibrated eyepiece but hadn't used it much. I suggested we try for objects near zenith.

Double Double was easily split. We went up to 301x with the 13mm eyepiece but the presentation was starting to break down so we decreased the magnification. I retrieved the 20mm eyepiece from the cabinet. That gave just under 200x.

We tried for comet 10P/Tempel 2. Unconfirmed.

We consulted the Cambridge Double Star Atlas.

ζ Lyrae was interesting in terms of colours. At high magnification we thought the colours white and pale yellow. Where the others got green we could only imagine. We did some drifts without tracking to get a better sense of the position angle (Haas said 150).

Σ2349 was very interesting in that the companion was so faint. I thought the main star white with a hint of yellow; the dim companion seemed orange to me. Katrina initially thought it red. We estimated the PA to be around 180 or 190°. I pointed out the remarks in Sissy Haas's book. That she gave no colours for the stars. Webb reported "bluish white and no colour." She reported the PA to be 204° (about 9 years ago).

2:52 AM. Katrina just headed off to bed.

3:18. (Burnham) β648 (near γ or gamma Lyr aka Sulafat) is curious. I didn't see a companion. Well, I should not have said that. I saw a bright white-yellow star in the middle of triangle of dim, equal stars. Is one of those the companion? Two? Three!?! This star is not listed in Sissy's book.

[I didn't find it until later, in the tables at the back of CDSA: β648 is a double with magnitudes of 5.4 and 7.5. The separation is 0.8". Which is around my career split limit... Listed as HP 93017 A and B in Stellarium.]

There are some nebula nearby... Interacting galaxies? Tails. Interconnected? I tried looking up these objects but couldn't find anything noted in TheSky6 nor Stellarium...

Starting to feel really tired. Despite drinking a Red Bull.

3:34. η (eta) Lyr. White and dusty rose. Widely separated at 196x. Haas says 28.1" apart. She also says the primary is bright white; Smyth says "sky blue; violet tint."

3:44. θ (theta) Lyr. aka Sh 292. Light yellow to a dark yellow. Wide separated, twice η. Not listed in Haas's book. CDSA suggests it is a triple! Mags 4.4, 9.1, and 10.9. Wide seps: 100" and 100"! Hmmm. Gonna have to look at that one again (and sketch).

3:48. Viewed Jupiter. Seeing is better. No red spot. Lots of detail is the cloud bands. Moons clear of stars.

4:05. In bed.