doubles in Draco (Toronto)

All right! Another night!

9:37 PM, June 23, 2012. Saw the Moon.

Looked for Mercury. 27° away from the Moon. But behind the trees again! Grrr.

9:58 PM. I put rubber bands on the big monitors, along the short edge, to hold the red cel film in place. Ah ha. It worked. In fact, it worked much better than the electrical tape I've used in the past. No more falling off and blinding myself.

10:18. Moved the John Little John computer into the kitchen.

10:19. Time to check the weather.

Current conditions:
Observed at: Toronto Pearson Int'l Airport
Date: 10:00 PM EDT Saturday 23 June 2012
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Tendency: rising
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 22.1°C
Dewpoint: 13.8°C
Humidity: 59 %
Wind: NE 5 km/h
Humidex: 25

Forecast for tonight:
Chance of showers, 30%; 16°C. Partly cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers late this evening. Low 16.

Tomorrow was looking grim.... Nooo. I didn't want it to rain on our parade...

10:21. I looked at the ADDS satellite imagery. It was definitely not looking good for tonight...

Grabbed the Cambridge atlas. I thought I'd use it tonight to send me to targets.

11:35. I viewed Σ3125 (Struve), aka SAO 16732. It was just barely visible. I thought the main pair was angled about 15 or 20 off the line of the other 3 bright stars. The star to the west is slightly fainter. They were crazy faint. Made it very difficult... I estimated a 1" or 2" separation. SkyTools 3 Pro said 2.1 (as of 1998). The Object Info box said A and B were magnitudes 10.3 and 10.3; the chart showed A was 9.8 and B 10.3.

11:44. I popped in the 18mm, the old Meade orthoscopic. Huh. It was easier to see! Now I thought they looked equal in brightness and they were the same colour. If you can call it that. Dull grey!

12:00 AM, June 24, 2012. I viewed η (eta) Draconis. But I didn't see anything in particular... I used the 18mm eyepiece and the Nagler 9mm.

I noticed the collimation was off a smidge.

12:08 AM. The seeing was turning bad. I couldn't see the companion of η Dra even though it was 4.8" away. An easy splitting distance. Was it an issue with brightness? I wondered. Maybe it was lost in the glare of the yellow primary.

I used the Bahtinov mask to focus with eta and then returned to HR6130 aka Σ2054. It did not look round to me. I thought, maybe, it was elongated up-down or in-line with η. The software said they were 1.00" apart.

I spotted a typo on the separation on Σ2368 AC... Should let Greg know.

12:25. I viewed 19 and 20 Dra by themselves, each. They'd be a nice binocular pair, I thought.

In the 36mm ocular, I spotted another medium tight double to the east.

I learned in ST3 that 20 is a triple star: there's a tight companion and then 19.

12:37. The seeing was getting very bad. I couldn't see anything... Ugh. Headed indoors.

1:02. After some digging, I found the NiteView program. I thought it might be good to put on my web site, to make it easier for me, and others, to locate. I installed it on John Smallberries. It's a great little app.