| Stuart Anderson | ||||
| Star:
Burnham 584 in Cancer
Date & Time: 2005 UTC, 16.Jan.2001 Seeing: 3 <1-10 Seeing Scale (10 best)>. Location of site: Hamburg, Germany Lat/Long: 53 34 N, 9 59 E Site classification: Suburban sky Sky darkness: -- <Limiting magnitude> Binoculars: Vixen Ultima 9x63 + tripod FOV: 5d |
Found Burnham 584 very easily inside the Beehive, M44 (no need for
star hopping here!). Burnham 584 is a triple in the centre of the cluster,
unmissable by its location at the western corner of a group of 5 stars
in the centre, which at first glance look a little like the distorted version
of the arrangement of dots on the "5" face of a die.
Through the binoculars Burnham 584 appears as a small triangular asterism - no problem at all splitting them. The primary is clearly significantly brighter than the other two. No colour was apparent in any of the three, but the poor conditions probably didn't help here. SMP later identified the stars as SAO 98010 (primary, mag. 6.6), SAO SAO 98013 (mag. 7.3) and SAO 98014 (mag. 7.5). Maybe 20 (at most) stars in M44 were visible in the binoculars. SMP identifies the smallest separation in the triangle as 49". I sometimes wonder what the limit in my binoculars would be. Temperature was perhaps minus 3 degrees - very cold! |
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