My wife Gerarda and I were out again Saturday night at Keller. It was a pretty good out there last night. Colder than Friday night, but there was less wind. Again went looking for double/multiple stars. But, first thing we looked at last night was Venus, appears to be in a gibbous phase. Very low in the west. We got there too late on Friday to see it then. We didn't spend much time looking at it as we had checked it out at home earlier before heading to Keller.
Since it was now double star time, we had to first go to Albireo. We had to do that right away as it was very low in the west. I could just barely see it naked eye in the soup. We got out later on Friday night, so we didn't see Albireo on Friday. To help us in our searches, I brought along a few books that we looked at to help find the various stars and also give ideas on what stars to find. We had: Starwatch (Harrington), Celestial Sampler (French), Cambridge Double Star Atlas (Mullaney, Tirion), Turn Left at Orion (Consolmagno, Davis), Double Stars for small telescopes (Haas).
Quite a variety of stars and quite the ranges in separation. We weren't able to separate the Pup from Sirius. For Rigel, just a little bump on the side. On the other hand, Sigma Orionis E is split out at 42 arc seconds. Stars we looked at over the two nights.
Albireo (Cygnus), Almach (Andromeda), Mesarthim and Lambda Arieta (Aries), Beta Monocerotis (Monoceros), Castor (Gemini), Sigma Orionis, Struve 761, Alnitak, Mintaka, Meissa, Trapezium, Rigel, iota Orionis, Struve 745, Struve 747 (Orion), iota-1 Cancri, Struve 1266 (Cancer), Polaris (Ursa Minor), Mizar and Alcor (Ursa Major), eta Cassiopeiae, iota Cassiopeiae, Struve 3053, Struve 3049 (Cassiopeia), eta Persei (Perseus), Sirius (Canis Major), gamma Leporis, h3759 (Lepus).
We finished up in Lepus. Since we were there, took a look for M79. I did find it. It wasn't very clear with the moonlight, but we did find it.
All in all, a couple of great nights of seeing double! 🙂