The night of the 23rd was predicted to be transparent and with very good seeing. Transparency was indeed quite good, but seeing was not to my hopes. It may have been because I didn't run my boundary layer fan for fear of dewing up again. In any case I spent time trying to split some close pairs in Pegasus along with some with large delta magnitudes; all will mixed results.
85 Peg / BU 733: Not seen [5.83, 8.9; 0.8"]. Seeing Pickering 6
Fox 103: Orange A. Very faint B to south, well separated. [6.25, 10.72; 13"]
STT 2: Yellow A, well separated faint B [AB,C seen, 6.3, 10.37; 18". AB is 0.4 separation but not seen]. In Andromeda.
STF 24: Near equal brightness white star. There is a third to the east, perhaps, well separated? [7.79, 8.44; 5". No third.]
BU 1047: Nope! [BC 9.11, 9.71; 0.4". There is an Aa,Ab 0.2", and an A,BC 11.3" -- I should have been able to see this one....]
STF 3061: Faint, but not too faint, near equal brightness, white, well separated. [8.4, 8.51; 7.1"]
STF 3060: Very close, ~3", equal brightness, pretty faint. [AB seen, 9.32, 9.65; 3.4". There are AC, AD, and AE pairs -- 5 stars total -- but the E is 16.58 mag and >999" -- stelle doppie seems to have run out of numerals for the separation measurement.]
HO 208: Could not find it -- could have been a certain orange star but did not detect any pair to it [spectral class is G0IV, yellow -- so maybe I was looking at the correct star. 8.2, 9.81; 1.0"]
STT 256: Wide separation equal brightness white stars; a fainter third forming an arc with the other two? [AB seen, 7.13, 7.28; 110.7". There are three more pairs, all orbiting the A star, but all much fainter. I could have seen the AD, 10.94.]
Anonymous to east of STT 256: Third in arc of stars, forms a pretty triangle of white stars.
AC 1: Tight yellow-white pair, near equal magnitudes. [7.27, 8.26; 1.8"]
h5451: Orange, pretty bright star, bluish / fainter widely separated B [6.01, 9.34; 55.3"]
Pi Peg: Bright white star with two fainter on each side in a nearly straight line. [CDSA's designation is not found on Stelle Doppie. Pi Peg has 5 stars, AB, AC, AD, and interestingly DE. I don't think I saw any of them, however, since the magnitudes are fainter than 11, and I haven't been seeing anything fainter than 10.]
STF 40: Pretty yellowish star with fainter, widely separated B. [AB seen, 6.72, 8.48; 12". The AC is fainter at 12.8]
S 384: Widely separated, yellow-white A, 2 delta-mag fainter B. [AB seen, 7.04, 10.30; 103.1". There are seven (!) stars in the system, 13th to 15th magnitude.]
STF 27: Pretty, light orange star with a faint bluish B, widely separated. [6.38, 11.25; 30"]
STT 10: White A with ~3 delta magnitude B, very wide separation. [Likely saw the AC pair, 6.46, 9.48, 274.5". There are AB and BD pairs in the system.]
49 Peg: Bright white and very faint wide separated B. [AB 3.9, 10.2, 16". AC, AD, Da,Db not seen of course.]
52 Peg: Not split -- 0.5"
STF 46: Orange with wide separated blue B. [5.56, 8.49; 6.6"]
I had started to feel the cold for quite a while, and at this point decided to stop rather than going inside for a warmer jacket. After sliding the shed back in place I spent some time looking through winter constellations in my 7x35 binoculars. I was surprised I could see the Auriga clusters, M38, M36, & M37 as faint patches. I suppose I am learning to better see them at a small scale; but it could also be due to the improved darkness of the sky with the LED streetlamps installed around town -- they are far better baffled than the old ones. Orion's belt region, with its many loops of stars. The star fields of Cassiopeia, Perseus, and M31 overhead. I noticed Gemini rising: M35, a large hazy spot, quite prominent. It was very nice.
The next day I pulled out both my mirrors to do a quick cleaning. The secondary had a haze over it, which cleaned off nicely. The primary was dusty and seemed to have a lot of pock marks on it. It cleaned well, and while running my fingers over it I did not feel any bumpiness, and the coating -- which is only a year old -- seemed uniform. I held the rear of the mirror up to the sun to check for pinholes, but the sun was too low and did not illuminate the whole of the mirror. Seems the pock marks are pin holes -- more of them than I would like -- but I don't have the patience to send the mirror out for coating. Perhaps in a few years I will send it out again -- I hope Steve Swayze is still refiguring mirrors by then -- to take care of the overcorrection and the turned-down edge. After reinstall my quick collimation showed the secondary alignment was well off; I will need to work on it when there's clear weather.
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