time with the 6-inch

Saturday night I fixed the Hargreaves strut on my 6-inch, and also removed the counterbalance bar from the OTA -- it was causing more problems than it was fixing. I also re-polar aligned it, and the Argo was more accurate as a result. Progress.

The annoying thing is still needing to manually slew. I am spoiled by Goto. Still and all, wonderful star images in mediocre seeing.

Seeing the Burnham pairs with my 6-inch makes me think I could make a project of re-observing all the ones he discovered with his 6-inch, to test myself against the master.  Will need to find a list...

STF 2878 AB: 152; 175x: Very close split, ~1 delta mag, very nice.
22H 14M 29.18S +07° 58' 34.2" P.A. 116 SEP 1.6 MAG 6.94,8.11 SP B9IV DIST. 224.22 PC (731.41 L.Y.)

STT 483 AB: 152; 285x 52 Peg.  Snowman/notched but not split.  I'll need the 20-inch for this one.

22H 59M 11.82S +11° 43' 43.8" P.A. 31.9 SEP 0.43 MAG 6.11,7.27 SP A8III DIST. 94.34 PC (307.74 L.Y.)

STF 2958 AB: 152; 175x: Very fine, wide separation, ~3 delta mag, white A and blue B.  Physical

22H 56M 51.47S +11° 50' 54.0" P.A. 15 SEP 4 MAG 6.63,9.09 SP A3VS DIST. 98.81 PC (322.32 L.Y.)

BU 701 AB: 152; 175x: Extremely fine, B appears with seeing on A's diffraction ring, ~1", a very fine point.   Burnham discovered with 18.5-inch, at 1.24", and it has narrowed since then.

22H 28M 07.24S +12° 14' 55.5" P.A. 176.1 SEP 1 MAG 7.34,9.62 SP K0V DIST. 66.4 PC (216.6 L.Y.)

I ended the night with a fine view of Mars, using 285x and a light red filter.  I also used my Planetary filter which gives the most natural color, but seems not as good for detail.  Small southern polar cap, and plenty of rocky mountain color shading, and some yellowish discoloration along the edge.