The Cygni 100
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...
Really Old Stars
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...
My Binocular Double Star Manifesto
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 Star Cluster
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...
A Late, Late Spring Galaxy Night
Sunday and Monday nights (18 and 19 June 2023), just days before the summer solstice (21 June), were some of the best skies we have had here in months, following rain Saturday night and a temporary respite from Canada wildfire smoke. I had a Sunday evening meeting so...
Venus and the Beehive
I observed at Lewis Young Park in Louisburg, Kansas Tuesday evening, June 13, 2023 with ASKC friend Bill Barlow, who motivated me to get to a darker site for the first time in months. I had qualms about the sky conditions, but Bill (a retired meteorologist) said it...
Oberwerk 120XL-SD First Light
A long anticipated arrival has occurred, and the Oberwerk 120XL-SD binocular telescope has returned to my Team BT, which now includes the full Oberwerk XL line-up (70XL-ED, 82XL-SD, 100XL-SD, 120XL-SD, and 127XL-SD). I evaluated the proto-type 120XL-SD several months...
Binary Bounty in Boötes
Following up on a conversation about SHY double stars in the Cloudy Nights binocular forum, I decided to observe the double star STTA 122, which includes the "E" component of SHY 247, a comoving stellar companion to what is arguably the most famous of all double stars...
Further Adventures with Comoving Stellar Companions
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...
A Shy Double Star in the Little Lion
A few weeks ago I was consulting Sky Safari and StelleDoppie to identify objects of binocular interest in Leo Minor and found a likely double star in the upper northwest corner of the constellation boundary with Ursa Major, near Tania Australis. Only a WDS code (no...