Faux double

I went out to take a quick peek at the sky before bed tonight and was
stunned by the Mars/Epsilon Geminorum pairing. The color contrast between
the two is quite beautiful; Mars with its stark and ruddy orange color and
Epsilon Geminorum with (to my eyes) a gentle bluish-green hue. The
separation between the two looked to be perhaps half of a degree.

Though not a momentous observation, this one takes a comfortable place in
my favorite naked eye treats.


--
Martin R. Howell

"The Astro Post"
http://theastropost.com
"The Astro Post Blog"
http://theastropost.wordpress.com

Marty,

Thanks for posting this as I will try to look for it Tuesday evening,
whether permitting of course

I went out to take a quick peek at the sky before bed tonight and was
stunned by the Mars/Epsilon Geminorum pairing. The color contrast between
the two is quite beautiful; Mars with its stark and ruddy orange color and
Epsilon Geminorum with (to my eyes) a gentle bluish-green hue. The
separation between the two looked to be perhaps half of a degree.

Though not a momentous observation, this one takes a comfortable place in
my favorite naked eye treats.

The other night one of my sons and I were out, and while looking at some
doubles in Gemini noticed that epsilon had a companion! You are right - a
nice sight.

Later that evening, I asked my son to move the dob to M101. He did so, and
commented that it didn't look very good. I was surprised, because even
though the seeing was bad the sky was clear and the crescent moon was
setting. I moved the scope just an eyepiece width, and there was M101, and
just as nice as I expected. My son had located NGC5474 instead of M101.
This is a new galaxy for us, and it will be fun to include it when viewing
M101.

Dennis