Splitting stars – for us and for you!

We are experienced amateur astronomers who especially enjoy viewing double stars with long-focus refractors.  This journal is a record of our observations, but we also hope it will serve as a guide to you to help you plan observing sessions and choose double stars you want to observe.  In the column to the left you’ll find a drop down menu listing the doubles in this blog by constellation – and to the right there’s a list of our 10 most recent observations. Finally, you have two other choices:

• First, you can read  our observations of a double and leave your own observations of that same star as a comment.
• Second, you can subscribe to this blog so that you get email notifications when we add a star to it. Just check out the links in the right-hand column.

We’d love to hear from you regarding your own observations of the same doubles.

Note on coordinates used in the blog posts: The coordinates used in our posts come directly from the WDS identification number for the star under discussion.  For example, the WDS number for Porrima is 12417-0127.  If you look at the blog post (here), you’ll see the coordinates listed are RA: 12h 41.7m Dec: -01° 27m.  The WDS number (and consequently the coordinates) are based on the coordinates of the particular star as of 2000 (frequently referred to as J2000).  Also, in the data listed for each star you’ll see a date in parenthesis which appears after the position angle for each pair or pairs.  That number is the date of the most recent measures (both the PA and the separation) in the WDS at the time the post was written (see the four stars in this example).  In a few cases, I’ve gone through and updated the measures and also updated that date.      JN