Astronomy

Albireo is one of the best double stars in the sky. An orange mag 3.2 A star contrasts superbly with a blue mag 5.4 B star. The double was easy to split even using the lowest power eyepiece and looked best at around x100 (medium power).

Relatively easy to find using the instructions in Turn Left... this cluster is located in the constellation of Hercules and was found high up in the southern sky. Visible as a faint fuzzy patch in the finderscope, at low power through the telescope it immediately sprang out in an incredible amount of detail. Using averted vision held bring out the cluster and the longer I looked at it the more I could see. The cluster filled most of the FOV at x100 and was distinctly grainy even at the centre with individual stars resolved towards the edge.

This cluster contains approximately 1,000,000 stars, is 10,000,000,000 years old and is located 25,000 LY away from us.

Another globular cluster in Hercules. Again this was easy to find and at first seemed to be better than 13. The cluster was obviously smaller, but seemed much brighter and more details could be made out, however revisiting M13 after looking at this showed how much bigger and more detailed M13 actually is.

This cluster is much further away than M13 and hence is much dimmer.

Another double star, again in Hercules because this is where the majority of clear sky was. Although it was easy to locate the correct star this was a difficult split even at x200. The two stars were split but the seeing conditions were making it very difficult to distinguish any colour contrast. The primary star appeared very washed out when it is should be red, but the secondary did appear to have a greenish tint. This is a target to revisit on a better night.