Epsilon Lyrae - The Double-Double

The weather hasn't been great recently but I managed to get out last night. After my failure to resolve the double in Polaris I decided to try another double star - Epsilon Lyrae. This is actually a system which has two lots of double stars orbiting each other - what a thought! This why it is also known as the Double Double.

To find it is relatively easy. It makes up the third point of an imaginary equilateral triangle between it, Vega and the closest star to Vega in the Lyra constellation.

I could resolve Epsilon Lyrae into two relatively easily using the lowest magnification possible on my telescope. Going up the magnifications didn't help to resolve the individual elements until I used a 10mm eyepiece with my Barlow lens, giving me magnification of 180x. This showed both double stars as slightly elongated stars although it was so subtle I couldn't be sure I had separated them or it could easily have been me not focussing correctly. Using my 6.3mm lens with the Barlow provided an excellent view of all four stars at once. This is technically beyond the highest power of my scope, but it worked wonders. Both doubles in the system were clearly separated. The view I got was pretty much like this photo:

Epsilon Lyrae is approximately 162 light years away. Unsplit the two double star systems of Epsilon Lyrae have a magnitude of about 4.6.

Astronomy Information

Since last week the weather has been too cloudy to see anything and now it's raining so I will just have to wait until the next good stargazing evening. in the meantime I thought I would mention a really friendly and useful forum I have joined. Stargazers Lounge have numerous forums (fora?) on all aspects of astronomy. Some of the members there have given me a very warm welcome and I recommend anyone new to astronomy to take a look. Here is a link to the site: http://stargazerslounge.com/.

When I first started thinking about getting into astronomy I bought a couple of books which have been really useful and reading these before I got my telescope has helped me get going quicker than I might have done.

Turn Left at Orion - This has been the most useful of the books I have bought. It is written specially with the owner of a small telescope in mind. Its main purpose is to provide a guide to sights you can see during the year just by star-hopping from easily found stars. It has a huge number of things to see. I have been picking sights from this book to help me have a target or two to focus on for each of my stargazing sessions. I find that if I go back the next day to something I have discovered the previous day using this book, I can pretty much find it straight away with no help. I think Turn Left at Orion will really help me fully exploit my telescope and show me all the wonders there are to see with the equipment I have.

Simple Stargazing - This gives a bit more science and lore about what stars are and how the constellations came to be known. Whereas Turn Left at Orion is like a guide book to the stars, Simple Stargazing is like a phrase/language book.

Stargazing for Telescopes - This was a book I got free with my telescope along with a planetarium and star atlas. It has actually been really useful to explain how my telescope and mount work.

I have come to recognise the importance of the weather in my new hobby. I have found a very detailed forecast using Astroweather Panel which can be found here. It looks scary but the website explains what ecah row shows. This is basically telling me to forget any ideas of using my telescope for the next few days!

Albireo - A Double Star in Cygnus

I was feeling tired from work today but it was a clear evening, and seemed darker than last night, so I decided to spend a short while stargazing. My aim for this evening was to view Albireo; the southernmost star of the constellation Cynus (The Swan). Albireo is relatively easy to find due to its position in Cygnus, although I found it easier by using the bottom two stars of Lyra to point to what is the next bright object along that line.

Image courtesy of Stellarium

Just from using the lowest magnification lens I have I could immediately see that Albireo is actually made up of two stars. Now I have always just looked at the night sky and assumed all stars are white. Well this certainly disproves that theory - the contrast in colours between the two stars was stark. The slightly larger one looked a light orange to me whereas its smaller companion had a distinct blue hue. Seeing the two together was a beautiful sight. I find the idea of two stars entwined in orbit somewhat romantic so I might try and find other double stars over the coming weekend.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Albireo is approximately 380 light years away. The larger orange star (Albireo A) is itself a binary star, although splitting this is way beyond my telescope's abilities.

M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

I tried resolving the double star of Polaris last night and frankly it looked like the same single star no matter how many different ways I looked at it so I gave up for now and tried something altogether bigger - the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. This was rapidly sinking to the west behind the house but I aimed my telescope about a third of the way down from the top right corner of the square that makes up the centre of the Hercules constellation and spotted a small smudge of light. This square is also known as the Keystone. Unfortunately I lost line of sight behind the house at that point before I got a good look at it.

How to find M13

Image taken from Stellarium

I went out a bit earlier tonight to catch it higher in the sky and found it again pretty quickly. It had taken me a few minutes to get my telescope pointing the right way, which was not easy given that the target was right above me and I have an equatorial mount. What I saw was the small smudge of light I found last night. It was brighter in the middle and less so on the outside. The skies weren't very dark so I couldn't see much more than this, and I certainly couldn't see it with the naked eye, but it was good to view my first deep-sky object. Higher magnification eyepieces just made the smudge darker and despite spending some time looking at it I couldn't resolve any more detail.

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
Image courtesy of NASA

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, is home to approximately 1 million stars. It spans 450 light years which means it's pretty big! It lies about 25,000 light years away from Earth. It is said to be one of the older bodies in space, possibly over 12 billion years old.