Backyard - "Seeing" and other fairy tales

by Mark Bracewell

Adhara (Epsilon Canis Majoris)
Component 1 Magnitude	1.50
Component 2 Magnitude	7.40
Separation	7.5

15,000 times more luminous than the Sun says the literature.

I've tried to split this before without any luck, seeing problems.

I set up on my deck which has a good view of the path this star will travel until about midnight, when it hits a tree. I'm determined, 7" separation can't be that hard....

I spend 3 hours without even a hint, instead, I devise the expanded Pickering seeing scale...

-1 Fairy Disk often visible. Pretend it's a star. Or fireworks a long way off.
-2 Everything is a globular cluster.
-3 Star winks out entirely. Recommend Braille star chart at this point as it will better match what you see in the finder.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Feb 01, 2005 13:40:31 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Feb 01, 2005 19:54:50 PT