It was a beautiful day with strong winds but those winds calmed down to gentle breezes by night time. The sky quality was very good with a great freshness in the air but it was also very chilly for the time of year so unlike my other nights out at home observing in my bed clothes and slippers I had to dress up for this one.
The plan tonight is to observe double stars in or around Cassiopeia and then, once rising high enough, attempt to image Jupiter and the Moon.
Seeing = 3
Trans = 3
Equipment = EQ6 Pro, 4" Refractor, Laptop with Starry Night and ToUcam Pro.
Location = Home
Start Time = 22:27
HIP8362 = A rather bland looking double at first appearance. A well separated pair and the primary star displays a strong gold colour.
HIP9312 = This is a fun double. The secondary star is so small and faint that I could only see it with averted vision. There were no apparent colours to me but a very nice pair regardless.
Iota Cass = A stunning triple! It has been a long time since I've seen any new triple systems and this one certainly has the wow factor to it. It takes a lot to split the star into all three members. My 8.1mm Hyperion showed two stars but averted vision kept making me think that I was seeing something very close to the primary star, so I put in the 5.1mm and sure enough there was a third star. Faint and very close to it's parent star. Starry nights' online info about the system said that the two stars are 100AU and 300 AU away from Iota. That to me was a rather mind blowing fact, considering that most doubles you look at are many times that distance from their parent stars. A thrilling observation and one I spend a long time looking at.
48 Cass = Quite a lovely but extremely tight pair which took all the magnification I could manage to split but once split it was a fine sight indeed.
HIP8626 = A standard looking double. Well separated with and orange coloured primary star.
HIP5950 = Very plain and standard looking indeed, with a large separation.
Psi Cass = Beautiful double. The primary star is large and golden yellow in colour with the secondary star a small and faint with a pale white appearance.
Theta Cass = A very tight double that needed the 5.1mm to split and a very pleasing sight to see, which seems to be a recurring pleasure with all the tight doubles tonight.
Moon = I decided that it was now time to start capturing some AVIs in the hope to make a small mosaic of the terminator. It took a long time for me to get things working because during set-up and trying to focus the image on my laptop screen the drivers for the cam corrupted and resulted in my seeing nothing but a black image no matter what I did. So I spent a long time downloading new drivers, editing the inf files so they would work with Windows 7. In the end I got all working and was able to capture 7 AVIs of the moon and two test AVIs of Jupiter. After this I packed up and went to bed and while in bed I had the laptop with me to try stacking the AVIs to preview the results but I was quickly disappointed to discover that during my annoyance of have to fix the cam I forgot to set the resolution to its highest so all my recordings were tiny and useless.
At least everything is working again and will, hopefully, be problem free the next night I use this equipment.
Finish Time = 01:44
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