Pluto and some doubles (Blue Mountains)

Steve was imaging in the Geoff Brown Observatory. Ian D had shacked up in the Tony Horvatin Observatory. No one else was using the Celestron 14-inch so I got to play.

10:37 PM, Sat 11 Jul 2015. Went to check the weather and noticed that the CAO weather page images had not updated since Jul 4 at 10:16 PM. Weird.

Took the data. As of 10:46 PM. 10 minute average wind speed 1.6, wind direction NW, immediate wind speed 1.6, high wind 24.1, humidity 77, barometer 1017.4, steady, temperature 19.4, dew point 15.4. No great skies. I lamented; last night was much better.

A general sky tour was held for members and guests...

We viewed Pluto visually. Some had never seen it.

After guests left and tired people headed to bed, I settled in.

2:39 AM, Sun 12 Jul 2015. Finally got Pluto in an image.

3:22 AM. Viewed Rotanev in Del, the neck of the Dolphin. SkyTools showed it was a quintuple system. Spotted D right away then E. D and E were equal brightness. Much fainter than A. Both blue. A is a pale yellow.

[ed: Haas reported in 2006 the AB pair at a separation of 0.6" in her double tars book but this is an extremely fast-moving binary system. ST3P showed a calculated distance of 0.26". Will be a very challenging target for a few years; max. sep. should be after 2025...]

To the north-west I saw HD 196411, a neat triple. A, B, and C were all blue-ish. Equal brightness. Maybe C was slightly fainter.

[ed: ST3P showed it as a quad. But the D star would not show itself. Like C in β (beta) Del. Bad skies, unfortunately, poor conditions, blocking magnitude 13 and a half and dimmer stars...]

The weather server stopped working again! Gar.

Noted Pluto was previously logged. Really?! I didn't remember viewing it before...

Enjoyed a night cap with Steve.

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Forgot to shoot darks...