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...
Over the past several years my observing has centered around viewing double stars with binoculars, which is not a common practice among astronomy hobbyists. Telescopes are widely preferred for these objects. The classic image is an observer with a refractor resolving...
Stephenson 1 is a star cluster in the constellation Lyra. It is about 1200 light years from our solar system and more or less centered on Delta 2 Lyrae, which ironically has been found not to be a cluster member. Nearby Delta 1 Lyrae is a 70% probable member. Also...
Noting that Leo Minor contains four SHY binary stars, I decided to seek out the other three after observing SHY 552 in my first adventure with very wide binaries and other comoving stellar companions. 😉 SHY 552 has a relatively cozy separation of 106.9 arc-seconds. My...
