Thursday, March 15, 2012

researched two stars

I wanted to know the identity of the two stars (or the double star system) I had spotted, Wednesday night, in the middle of Messier 41 but that did not show up in SkyTools 3. Jumped into SIMBAD and entered the coordinates.

Not a double star; two separate stars:

BD-20 1553 6.84
*iC 06 45 53.24 -20 41 21.1 A0:V: 7 0

CPD-20 1596 24.20
*iC 06 45 52.57 -20 41 35.9 ~ 1 0

So, no great mystery. Just an aberration in the ST3 database.

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To be clear. SkyTools shows a pair of stars at this location, about 1.5 arc-minutes east of HD 49024. The Interactive Atlas represents them as very faint stars, J064547.5-204147 and J064547.6-204142.

ST3P says these stars at magnitude 15... In the SIMBAD Aladin image, they seem about the same brightness as PPM 726779 (or Tycho 5961-2646-1) which ST3P says is mag 10.

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