A list of the least observed constellations in northern skies would surely include Lacerta the Lizard, added to the celestial canon by Johannes Hevelius in 1687. Maybe THE least observed? How could that be determined, I wonder? 🤔The above image is a detail from Plate...
I observed the 48 Cygni starfield Thursday evening, September 14, 2023, from the east side of my yard because Cygnus is migrating to the west now and passing behind the dreaded pines of roam near my driveway. (Massive pine trees that block the western side of the sky...
Work on the Cygni 100 catalog is underway, complete with its own numbering system. An unexpected challenge in writing the catalog, however, is the seemingly endless amount of information found while looking up details for each double star. Sort of a nice problem to...
The original Cygni 100 list created last summer (2022) did not include Mu1 Cygni because of the magnitude difference between the A and D components. A parameter for the first list was to limit the difference to less than 2x because a significant magnitude difference...
Last summer (2022) a Cloudy Nights friend had a conversation with me about the relative merits of telescopes versus binoculars for observing double stars, binocular double stars by that time having become something of a passion of mine. 😉My friend pointed out that...
I have the book Searching for the Oldest Stars: Ancient Relics from the Early Universe written by professional astronomer Anna Frebel checked out from the library, and wondered if it might be possible to view an ancient star with binoculars from my yard. To my...
