hercules doubles

Seeing was quite good last night, though transparency was hurt by some summer marine haze.  Had nice detailed views of Jupiter and Saturn.  Before the session started I used the SCU program to confirm the settings on my ServoCAT and just make sure I could establish the link.  I could link, and I also discovered that the AutoCAL program did not automatically save the results of when I ran it in November -- contrary to what G.M. said in his instructions.  So, I updated the settings (which fortunately I wrote down.  I found the tracking was dramatically improved -- so much so I feel anyone doing this set-up needs to have AutoCAL done as part of the standard set-up.  Ran through some doubles in Hercules and beyond.  Many of them are not in the standard Argo library so I star hopped using the hand controller.  GOTO was consistently off by a couple degrees.

STF 2276: Beautiful near equal well separated, yellowish, in nice field of stars. [AB]
18h 05m 43.30s +12° 00' 13.9" P.A. 257 sep 7.1 mag 7.09,7.44 Sp A7p dist. 138.12 pc (450.55 l.y.)

STF 2289: Just split in 20" at 205x, but flaring. 333x had messy diffraction. 8" mask at 333x gave clean disks, split, ~0.7". Dull yellow and yellow-red colors.
18h 10m 08.69s +16° 28' 35.0" P.A. 215.3 sep 1.24 mag 6.65,7.21 Sp A0V+G0III dist. 263.85 pc (860.68 l.y.)
STF 2319: Disk is not round. Very moderate olive. 8" 667x. A faint star comes out at this magnification but is not seen at 333x. It does show in the 20" at 333x easily, but the A star's disk is more diffracted. [AB not seen, it is same mag and only 5". Faint star probably AC. No close in to A noted in WDS.]
18h 27m 43.94s +19° 17' 43.9" P.A. 269 sep 42.9 mag 8.41,10.74 Sp F5 dist. 161.29 pc (526.13 l.y.)

STT 358: Pretty, near equal white, perfect disks. 8" 333x.
18h 35m 53.22s +16° 58' 32.5" P.A. 144.3 sep 1.49 mag 6.94,7.08 Sp F8V dist. 32.88 pc (107.25 l.y.)

STF 2339: White and dull white B. Close but well separated, ~1" [AB-CD seen. AB is Hu 322 1 delta mag 0.2", good to try again at 20"]
18h 33m 45.62s +17° 43' 55.9" P.A. 277 sep 1.5 mag 7.45,8.67 Sp F6V dist. 183.49 pc (598.54 l.y.)

STF 2360: Fainter white and 1 delta mag bluish B, ~4" nice pair.
18h 39m 19.16s +20° 55' 58.9" P.A. 358 sep 2.4 mag 7.97,9.16 Sp B5IV dist. 2500 pc (8155 l.y.)

STT 359: !! Kissing 8" 333x, hairline split 667x. 20" too diffracted. Near equal white A and bluish white B.
18h 35m 30.40s +23° 36' 19.9" P.A. 3.7 sep 0.75 mag 6.35,6.62 Sp G9III-IV dist. 144.3 pc (470.71 l.y.)

STF 2401: A and much fainter blue B, wide separation. [AB]
18h 48m 57.83s +21° 10' 01.3" P.A. 38 sep 4.1 mag 7.27,9.27 Sp B3V dist. 2941.18 pc (9594.13 l.y.)

STF 2415: Nice pair, 2 delta mag, well separated.
18h 54m 32.84s +20° 36' 55.1" P.A. 290 sep 2 mag 7.07,8.73 Sp A0IV dist. 194.93 pc (635.86 l.y.)

STF 2406: White star no split at 8" 333x and 667x, but needed the 20" to see the well separated B star. [11th mag a limit for 8"]
18h 49m 55.77s +26° 25' 30.6" P.A. 6 sep 4.6 mag 7.12,11.21 Sp A3V dist. 118.34 pc (386.03 l.y.)

STF 2445: Wide separated ~1.5 delta mag. [AB]
19h 04m 38.50s +23° 19' 45.5" P.A. 262 sep 12.4 mag 7.25,8.57 Sp B2Ve dist. 476.19 pc (1553.33 l.y.)

STF 2457: Pale yellow stars, wide separation, 1.5 delta mag.
19h 07m 08.02s +22° 35' 03.7" P.A. 201 sep 10.2 mag 7.46,9.52 Sp A7IV dist. 95.15 pc (310.38 l.y.)

Doing some internet searching today I found what I think is the correct ASCOM driver for ServoCAT.  What is so frustrating is that the ServoCAT instructions fail to mention anything about having to load ASCOM -- another real flaw in their documentation.  Too much left for the user to figure out.