Starmap Pro

After the problems I had last time with trying to find anything I sought some advice on the excellent Stargazers' Lounge forum. I received advice about using my red dot finder and to use a star atlas to star-hop. As I like gadgets I decided to use my iPhone apps to do this instead. So this week I have been using Starmap Pro and carefully matching what that says I should see in my eyepiece against what I am looking at, and although it's a slow process it has really worked well this week. Following the app as a star atlas has meant I have found my targets much easier than before and should reduce the frustration that I had last time I was out. I have been able to get out a couple of times this week and here are the results.

Eta Cassiopeiae - A Double Star

In the constellation of Cassiopeia, Eta Cassiopeiae is a Double Star. I am beginning to really enjoy looking at these, especially when there is a colour contrast between the stars in the system. This one was a little bit trickier because the primary star of the binary is much brighter than the other. Star A has a magnitude of 3.6 and Star B is 7.5. Using a relatively high magnification I found there was a distinct colour contrast between the two with the Primary Star looking slightly off-white and the smaller star much more orange. This particular double is just 20 light years away and take 500 years to orbit each other. The primary star is a slightly bigger and shinier version of our own sun.

On the back of this success I tried to resolve Polaris and Iota Cassiopeiae. Neither of these would split for me at any magnification. I will try again another day on these!