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.