Observing report 19-05-2004 - make mine a double

Equipment: Orion Optics Europa 250 ("Mini-Hubble") f4.8 Newt on HEQ5
mount.
Objects: Epsilon Bootes, Globular Cluster M3
Conditions: Slight cloud, no ground breeze, seeing 7-8/10 at a guess.

Got the 'scope set up at 8.30 to cool down. This wasn't intended to be a
proper observing session, it was more a chance to try out my new power
pack (part number L52AT from Maplin - it works a treat by the way!).

Started observing at roughly 9.50pm with Epsilon Bootes. From a number
of sources I'd heard that this was a rather nice double star. What I
hadn't fully appreciated is that it's also a bit of a challenge. The
magnitudes of the stars are quite different (2.5 and 4.9) and their
seperation is also quite small (well, to me anyway). I'd actually
attempted this one last night with a 5" achromat (a Sky Watcher f5
model) but had failed. Mainly I think I was simply using woefully
inadequate magnification but it could also have been the seeing or the
achro's optics. It's better at low power, wide field stuff.

In Mini-Hubble at roughly 200x the primary glowed a warm yellow/orange,
while the secondary was distinctly light blue. Some reports have this as
green but I couldn't see that myself. It was, however, very much
twilight still - no way could the sky be called 'black' - so that may
have played a factor.

Having satisfied myself that I had split Epsilon Bootes as cleanly as I
was going to, I decided to see if I could find globular cluster M3.
Normally this wouldn't be difficult, but the sky was still quite light.
Pointed the finderscope in roughly the right area and panned around with
my 32mm e/p (37.5x). Finally found it after a couple of minutes, which I
thought was quite good, considering. Couldn't really make out any
details this early on, except an impression that it's perhaps a bit more
'ragged' than M13. Tried bumping up the magnification to 200x in a fit
of madness but the sky was far too light to allow this. I'll have to
revisit this on a proper session.

Packed up at 10.45pm.

Jim
--
Find me at http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk AIM/iChatAV: JCAndrew2
"We deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal
laws of right and wrong break down; beyond those metaphysical
event horizons there exist ... special circumstances" - Use Of Weapons

Jim wrote:

Equipment: Orion Optics Europa 250 ("Mini-Hubble") f4.8 Newt on HEQ5
mount.
Objects: Epsilon Bootes, Globular Cluster M3
Conditions: Slight cloud, no ground breeze, seeing 7-8/10 at a guess.

Bother - forgot to add 'Location: Stafford, England. Times are in BST
(UTC+1)'

Sorry.

Jim
--
Find me at http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk AIM/iChatAV: JCAndrew2
"We deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal
laws of right and wrong break down; beyond those metaphysical
event horizons there exist ... special circumstances" - Use Of Weapons