Naked eye star splitting

From: Tom Wales (bbjazzman_at_nospam.verizon.net)
Date: 06/29/04 

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:14:13 GMT

Last night while observing the moon my youngest daughter who is 13 came out
to have a peek, she asked if there was anything to look at other than the
moon. I asked her if she would like to see a double star in the big dippers
handle. She asked what a double star was so I explained as I pointed the dob
in the direction of Mizar/Alcor double in Ursa Major. She asked me where I
was looking and I told her that I was pointing towards the second star in
the big dippers handle and she said "Oh you mean those two stars that are
side by side, is that what we are going to look at?" I aligned the bulls eye
in the Telrad up with Mizar and had her look through it to see if that was
indeed what she meant, and she said "yea those two in the center of the
little red circle" I was amazed, I see only one star there with my naked
eyes, she sees two and told me one was brighter than the other to boot! The
Moon was up and so because I could barely see Megrez I guessed the sky to be
about mag 3.5, my question is, is it normal for young children to be able to
see this double star with naked eyes? Now comes the kicker, I decided to
look at the M27, after I found it I had her look at it. She looked at it
through the telescope and then went to the Telrad, looked at the position it
was in the sky and told me she could see a fuzzy blob there without the
telescope! She swears this to be so, we were pretty well dark adapted and
hadn't looked at the moon in about 20 minutes. Is this possible given the
mag 3.5 sky? (as observed by me). I sure wish my eyes were that good!

Tom Wales

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