Dave's backyard
| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 14 April 2001 |
| Time | 2100-2330 PDT |
| Location | Santa Rosa, Ca 38°16'N 122°40'W |
| Weather | Hazy and cold |
| Equip | C8, 40mm, 26mm and 10mm plossls |
| Seeing | 8/10 |
| Trans. | 6/10 |
It was a short night for me Saturday as I had to get up early the next morning. I spent the time I had going back to some of the sights I had skipped in "Turn Left", which turns out to be a bunch of double stars. I had somehow also overlooked M41 and M50 so they were also on the list.
Gamma Leonis: I am sorry I hadn't looked at this one before. The primary was clearly yellow and there seemed to be an orange tint to the secondary. Seeing was pretty solid with nice airy disks around both components.
Sigma Orionis: Pretty cool multiple, colors weren't obvious as Orion was pretty low. What aperture would be needed to separate (if possible) the A/B (separated by about 100AU) components of this system. Struve 761 is also in the same field of at 200x
M41: I'm beginning to really like open clusters. This one had a nice orange star near the center of the main concentration. To me it looked kind of like a bird, maybe a swallow with a long tail going northwest, my imagination is vivid when the only company is me and the stars.
Iota Cancri: WOW! This one has a beautiful golden yellow primary and an intense blue secondary. I probably spent 20 minutes staring at this pair. If this is what doubles can look like I can't wait to get a look at Albireo once it gets above my horizon before I run out of steam. Struve 1266 another double is about .5 deg away to southwest.
M50: Very open cluster, not much to see on first glance, but after staring at it for a while, more and more stars came into view. After seeing the detail present after a long look, I went back to M41 and did the same thing. It just re-enforced the bird image with twin arcs of stars heading off to the northwest. I don't know if it is part of the cluster but it was cool.
Epsilon Bootis (Izar): I was just able to split this one at 200x with a bright yellow primary and undetermined color on the secondary...question with an 8" sct should this be easy to split.
For a short night I had a great time, even if my teeth were chattering, (didn't dress warm enough...duohh!) hopefully the weather holds out for the 21st and some somewhat new moon observing at Lake Sonoma.