12 replies to this topic

[JimP]

For health reasons I am going to move down to telescopes from 80mm up to about 130mm. Because of this, I intend to concentrate on observing double stars while maintaining an interest in many other areas of visual Astronomy from Bortle  4 skies. There will be myriads of doubles potentially within the reach of my scopes. Have you a list of doubles you want to view, even complete that you use to choose which doubles you want to view?

 

Jim Phillips 

[lwbehney]

Double stars, which include a carbon star are very cool. I think there is a list of these on Cloudy Nights, but I don't recall the title of the thread. 

[T1R2]

Luckily I keep old copies of S&T and Astronomy, so I've been using the "List of 35 Favorite Double Stars" in the May 2016 issue of Astronomy for the last few weeks, its has a lot of good ones and some I haven't been able to track down as of yet because of the constant clouds.

[JimP]

Excellen! I will have to see if I have a copy amongst my stack of journals. Thanks very much!

 

Jim

[Pete W]

This is James Mullaney’s list of 300+ celestial showpieces - DSOs, doubles and carbon stars; it was published in Sky and Tel about 10 years ago(?).  It includes about 150 nice doubles and 20 carbon stars. They’ve been placed in a separate worksheet.  As a bonus, his short descriptions are delightful.

Attached Files

•  Mullaney celestial showpieces.xlsx   63.8KB   47 downloads

[T1R2]

Oh, I almost forgot, sometimes I don't use a list, I just take my Jumbo PSA (Pocket Sky Atlas) out and flip it open to a constellation that's in a good position for comfortable viewing and navigate my way around double stars using the chart and star hop around, I also have a small Ozark Trail LED lantern that is one of those pull types to raise it out you just grab it and pull on the handle and turn it on, and I cut a diffuser screen with some orange construction paper and taped it to the outer edge of the upper housing so it creates a soft orange glow for reading the charts without doing mush damage to your night vision. But Im going to change that out with an orange plastic diffuser from a school folder from the school supply section at the store.

[JimP]

That's a great way to observe and save your night vision!

 

Jim

[quilty]

last night I came across a beautiful one a about 11 pm quite in the South at about 45° elevation (8°E)
my rough guess is Mag 0 for the A and Mag 3 for the b, separation 4°. Nice to see at 100x, b sitting on top. What might that have been?

Edited by quilty, 22 May 2025 - 08:56 AM.

[scout]

Double stars, which include a carbon star are very cool. I think there is a list of these on Cloudy Nights, but I don't recall the title of the thread. 

Here's a list of double stars with carbon stars that I saved from a Cloudy Nights thread:

 

https://www.cloudyni...ttach_id=150544

[Spile]

You might find my list useful https://astro.catshi...0-binary-stars/

[sarmanini]

eh, my own list is pretty thick

https://www.dropbox....t=k19kgdsw&dl=0

 

It include 1600 systems (a printed coil bound copy is on lulu.com; "The pocket double star companion")

[Threads_of_Time]

T1R2's idea of just opening up an atlas and doing some star hop exploring is good. I use an atlas that also facilitates that.

 

Agnes Clarke's Discovering Double Stars II provides double star info in a two-page spread - chart on left page, info on the right. It's available as a free PDF but I also bought the ring-bound version. Note that the first versions have quite a different layout than the version II (both are on page below) . Not as much great info as Pete's Mullaney file and Bretts 500 file but pithy and useful.

 

https://discovering-...ng_doubles.html

[C. Evangelista]

Here is an interesting but rather short list of colored double stars:

 

https://www.jouscout...nt/belmontd.htm