Due to winter weather I am back to observing from my light polluted patio at home. After eight months of Anza fun, home sky looks particularly bad. Large areas of sky completely devoided of stars; a few visible bright stars floating in the gray soup. We used to have a couple of light domes, now it is just one and I am sitting in the middle. It seems that during this year my home sky made another transition, from orange to red. If I only hunt
The moment I took the stuff out it got wet almost immediately. Right, that to. Luckily, I made an extra-long dewshield to put on top of scope’s dewshield, and it protected
OK, enough complaining, now to the good stuff. It was still a joy to use the Stelarvue, from buttery-smooth focuser to the sharp optics; rich star colors, pinpoint stars at lower power and well-defined airy disks at high. Baader BBHS T2 prism diagonal and Vixen SLVs
I will skip trivial and list only challenging and/or beautiful binaries.
Perseus
STF 162 – 6.5, 7.2, 9.2, 10, ab1.9”, ac20.8”, ad139” – at 29x white pinpoints of C and D are readily visible. Digging dipper (179x) reviles a tight pair of uneven white stars (A & B).
Chi Per AD – 6.1, 9.6, 123.4” – such extra wide pairs rarely look good, but in this case main has a beautiful copper color, nicely contrasted against silvery secondary.
STF 268 – 6.7, 8.5, 2.8” – touching split at 119x and tight clean split at 179x. Larger cream and smaller cold white airy disks separated by hair.
STF 272 – 8.3, 8.4, 1.9” – clean split at 179x. Plain white color pair but looks nice due to equal size and proximity.
ARY 72 – 7.7, 10, 9.3, 9.8, 8.7, ab35.4”, ac94.8”, ad133”, ae139” – This multiple resides in the center of Trumpler 2 open cluster. Rich orange main surrounded by silvery specs at various angles and distances, 29x.
HJ 1123 – 8.4, 8.5, 20” – This wide pair of equal white stars sits in the center of M34 open cluster. They clearly belong together even in the swarm of other stars. That's love for you!
29x.STF 292 – 7.6, 8.2, 22.9” – rich yellow color of 12 Per in
STF 301 – 7.9, 8.7, 8.2”, orange, blue – nice color contrast, 48x to split, 79x for better color definition.
Eta Per – 3.8, 8.5, 9.2, 11.6, 11.4, ab31.4”, ae243”, ac64”, af57.4” – The main attraction is nicely framed at low power (29x) colorful orange-blue AB pair. Since I was already there, I have also picked a few fainter components, all of white color.
STF 314 AC – 7.0, 7.3, 1.6” – tight pair of equal white stars. Partial split at 119x, touching split at 179x.
Per 20 AC – 5.4, 9.7, 14” – nice contrast in size and color. Bright yellow main with small dark blue sidekick, 119x.
Well, that was fun despite mushy skies.
