Eyes Full Of Stars

I was setting up my 20″ mirrored reflector last night for some Astronomy Adventures guests and I thought “hmmm, I wonder if I can catch the pup?” So I popped in a 6mm eyepiece and with the Paracorr in place, it yielded about 523x. Dang, Sirius was bright! It took a while to get the scope tracking just right. Even a little bit of wander translates in to big error at this magnification.

After checking all around and hoping the diffraction spikes weren’t laying on top Sirius B, I saw it!

Snugged up right at the edge of the glare from Sirius itself was a small chip of light. I moved the scope around to be sure it was really there. The small point of light tracked right along with the main star. I am confident I bagged it at last – the white dwarf companion of the night sky’s brightest star.

Wow.

more on Sirius A and B here

Hubble image of Sirius A and B

Click on pen to

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Current Events, General, Stargazing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.