Struve 295

 
William L. Schart
Star: Struve 295
Date & Time: Saturday December 20, 2003
Seeing: 7 <1-10 Seeing Scale (10 best)>. 
Transparency: --- <1-10 Scale (10 best)>
Location of site: Texas, USA
Site classification: suburban
Conditions: ~50°F, or 10-12°C, mostly calm, occasional gust of wind. 
Sky darkness:  4 <Limiting magnitude> 
Telescope: C8
Eyepieces: 25mm, 17mm, 10mm, 6.5x 
Magnification: 80x, 120x, 200x, 300x 
This is a negative report: although it was easy to locate this, I was unable to 
even get an elongation on this.
 
 
 

 

 
 
Bill Green
Star: Struve 295
Date & Time: 27 December 2003
19:00 to 22:00 (UT -5)
Seeing:  7 to 8 <Pickering>
Transparency:  <1-10 Scale (10 best)>
Location of site: Catawba, VA U.S.A
37° 16' N 79º 57' W
Site classification: Rural
Conditions: 0% cloud cover, excellent
transparency, light surface breeze
Sky darkness: 4.0  <Limiting magnitude>
( 1st 1/4 moon)
Telescope: TV NP101 f/5.4 APO Refractor
Mount: TV Gibraltar
Eyepieces: Nagler type 6 (11, 5, 3.5, & 2.5mm)
Panoptic 24 used as finder
Magnification: 216x
  
I had tried on 2 previous occasions to split this double; both times failed due to poor seeing. On this night the steady sky cooperated and success was relatively easy. Once located with the 24 Pan I switched to the 2.5 Nagler (216x). The elusive B star began to pop into view with direct vision. Averted vision revealed it very easily. During brief times of unsteady seeing B was obscured in the diffraction ring "noise" from A. But most of the time it was a clean split. I could not appreciate any real color indications. A appeared white, or "ash" colored. While B seemed to be something other than white I could not assign any particular color. Maybe it was simply 
the broad difference in magnitude that gave the illusion of color. This was a tough one, at least for me. It was quite satisfying to bag it.
 

 


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