bad seeing night

I hoped to get out to the Pinnacles last night for some deep sky time.  But the morning's forecast showed cloudiness in the early evening; the drive would not be worth the two hours of clear sky time before the moon rose.  So I tried to content myself with a doubles session with the 12.5-inch; seeing was forecasted to be "good."  Sadly it did not turn out that way.  Seeing was never better than Pickering 6 and often 4 or 5.  I could not form good star images above 170x, and this was not enough power to split anything <3", which was most of my list.  I "saw through" the smudged stars to see what I could, sometimes pushing magnification higher than the seeing supported just to get hints of splits.

Starting out at 170x:

CTA 102: Quasar: In a flaring outburst; reported to have increased about 1 magnitude in the last 24-48 hours.  My guess is ~12 mag.  Brighter than the two companion triangle stars in the finder chart, which were themselves difficult to see.

BU 852: Likely widely separated faint star to the south.  Other, more widely separated to the NE.  More in field, including a wide, near equal magnitude pair to the NW. [AB is 7.21, 10.71; 58" 283°.  BC is 11th mag but only 1.2", not seen.  BD is 13.7 mag, not seen.  There's also Aa, Ab, spectroscopic]

STF 2969: Pretty yellow and orange, ~3", 3 delta mag.  Nice. [8.42, 9.7; 4"]

HO 482: Multiple in view.  Likely the very faint to west which pops out with seeing; another to the south.  Both wide.  A could be a very close pair, it does not seem round.  [AB is 0.6" 1 delta mag, so my suspicion was correct.  AB,C is 10.97 PA 198°; I may have misjudged the PA.  There is an AB,D pair, too wide for me to notice.]

Cou 15: Not much seen but a single star; seeing is not good. [Probably misidentified since Cou 15 is in Hercules?]

@ 277x:

STT 488: Bright A and very-very faint B ~west, fairly wide separation [6.84, 12.00; 14.6" PA 335°]

h1859: Nice double-double.  Both ~ same brightness combination, about 1 delta mag between the As and Bs.  The pair to SE is closer together.  [AB is 6.45, 11.45; 33.8".  There are three other pairings discovered later than John Herschel's in the system.]

STF 2968: Pretty close ~ 3 delta mag.  Orangish B.  [6.69, 9.48; 3.2"]

BU 78: Could be three or four in system.  Two faint are in a line stretching north from A; another fainter star to the east. [AB 7.47, 11.09, 18.5" 54°.  AC 12.27, 47.9" 58° -- so the line of three I saw is the system.  Very cool to see the orbits happen to line up like that!  Probably a once in many thousands of years chance.  300 light years distant.]

BU 385: Wide, bright pair the three very faint in a line, south to east from the A star.  [AB not seen, near equal mag. 0.7".  AB,C and AB,D seen as two in the "faint line" of stars]

STF 2978: Bright and easy; yellow-white A and orange B, ~1 delta mag. [6.35, 7.46; 8.2"]

@ 340x:

STF 175: Near equal white, fairly wide separation; maybe a 3rd to the west? [AB 8.99, 9.36; 28.1".  BC is 13.16, 159", PA 37° -- roughly where I guessed it was.]

STF 196: Just off a bright star, making a pretty scene.  1/2 delta mag white pair, about 10" split.  [AB 9.36, 10.92; 1.8" -- not seen.  Likely I saw the B and the C in the AB and AC systems.  This is a complex multiple with four stars visible but five different combinations.  The orbits must be haywire.]

@ 170x:

STF 200: Pretty faint, close ~ 2 disk split, near equal mag.  [9.55, 10.29; 8.1" -- how poor the seeing was to think this was 2 disks split!]

STF 212: Deformed star as A, could be very close near equal pair; suspect very faint to north in system too. [8.35, 8.71, 1.9"  Seeing poor that I could not split but did see deformation -- relatively low magnification too]

STF 226: Near equal mag. orange, but split is lost in poor seeing, appears oval with 170x.  With 277x it appears as two lobes awash in diffraction. [AB 8.02, 9.64; 1.8", seen through the poor seeing.  There's also a AC "Lep 6" 16th magnitude and 252" -- how'd they find that?]

@ 277x

STF 240: Faint but pretty wide separation ~4", equal magnitude yellowish-white.  [8.32, 8.6; 4.8"]

STF 244: Pretty faint, equal magnitude ~3-4", well split. [9.28, 9.41; 4.3"]

STF 221: Orange and blue pair, 2 delta mag., 8"  Pretty. [8.13, 9.45; 8.4".  AC 12.72 mag and 67" not seen.]

STF 224: Near equal brightness white pair, ~10", nice split. [8.28, 8.29; 5.9"]

On the bright side, during this morning's twilight I had a nice view of the 3rd quarter moon nearby to Jupiter through 7x50 binoculars.  Spica was to the far end of the view.  The moon shown nice earthshine and an unfamiliar broken line along the terminator.  I really must wake earlier to take in morning views of the moon through the telescope.