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  • Rapt in Awe

    My Journey through the Astronomical Year

    Think of this as a "companion text" to this, the main web site. Not required reading, butI hope you'll find it interesting and helpful.

Double Stars

My friend John Nanson and I have a “star splitters” blog that serves as a guide for finding (by constellation) and observing double stars that we find particularly interesting.

You can read it here.

It now covers more than 60 doubles, plus reviews of some telescopes used and observing advice related to finding and splitting doubles.

We are experienced amateur astronomers who especially enjoy viewing double stars with long-focus refractors. But we use binoculars and other types of telescopes as well. And while this journal is a record of our observations, we also hope it will serve as a guide to others, helping them plan observing sessions and choose double stars to observe. There’s a drop down menu on the left listing by constellation the doubles we’ve observed – and to the right there’s a list of our 10 most recent observations. Finally, you have two other choices:

* First, you can read our observations of a double and leave your own observations of that same star as a comment.
* Second, you can subscribe to this blog so that you get email notifications when we add a star to it. Just check out the links in the right-hand column.

John observes from his home near the west coast of Oregon, I observe from my home near the East Coast – well, really the south coast of Massachusetts.

3 Responses

  1. i am amateur astronomer i like very much adouble stars ineed more infomation about it and galaxies thank you very much

    • Hi Jamal:

      Double stars fascinate me and I have created a separate web site with John Nanson, another amateur, devoted just to double stars. You’ll find many doubles listed there with direction on how to find each of them. Please go to: http://bestdoubles.wordpress.com

      As to galaxies, the easiest to see are the Andromeda Galaxy – a fall evening object for those of us in mid=northern latitudes – or the Magellanic Clouds for those in the Southern Hemisphere. You can find some other galaxies with binoculars, but they’re difficult. To track those down a great book for beginners is “Turn Left at Orion” by Guy Consolmagno and Dan M. Davi. Stephen James P’Meara’s “Deep-Sky Companions: The Messier Objects,” is also an excellent beginner’s guide to many galaxies and other faint objects. This Web site – Prime Time: Your Journey Through the Astronomical year – is aimed primarily at the naked eye and binocular user trying to learn their way around the night sky and so doesn’t provide much information for the telescope user.

  2. Excellent blog you have here.. It’s hard to find quality writing like yours these days. I honestly appreciate individuals like you! Take care!!

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