Saturday, January 30, 2021

imaged Sirius before meridian (Bradford)

OK. Prime time. Or rather, prime target. Sirius. Tried to split A and B.

bright Sirius in colour

Celestron 8, Vixen Super Polaris-IDEA GoToStar, William Optics external focuser, manually focused, Canon 40D (unmodified), Tele Vue PowerMate 2x, Canon EOS Utility, IOGEAR USB-ethernet extension, 2 seconds, ISO 1600, RAW, daylight white balance. Minor adjustments in Canon Digital Photo Professional 4.

North to top-left; east to bottom-left.

screen grab from ST3 of Sirius

Screen snapshot from SkyTools 3 Pro, Context Viewer.

Good correspondence again.

The B companion, The Pup, should be too the left.

PPM 217609 is near the top-right. Magnitude: 8.6 (Tycho-2). Below that star is PPM 713043, mag 9.1. Orangey PPM 217620 is down and right from Sirius, mag 8.5. These stars are the same magnitude that Sirius B should be...

A and B are wider (about twice as much) as Castor A and B...

But I can't see anything. Blown out.

I did a lot of bracketing. In a ½ second image, with reduced contrast, were I can still see PPM 217620, nothing emerges near alpha. Sadly. I think I need more grunt, a 4x. Or a bigger 'scope. A much bigger 'scope...

Oh, and I don't know where that diffraction spike is coming from. Something on the corrector?

Sirius: α (alpha) CMa, 9 CMa, AGC 1 (WDS designation), HR 2491, HD 48915, SAO 151881, PPM 217626, and HIP 32349.

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