Re: Naked eye star splitting

From: Sam Wormley (swormley1_at_mchsi.com)
Date: 06/29/04 

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:58:43 GMT

Tom Wales wrote:
>
> 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

  When I was a kid (grew up on an iowa farm without light pollution) I
  could see that Epsilon Lyra was a double star.... can't do it now
  without optics.

  Have your daughter look at Epsilon Lyra.

  I'd be interested in how many stars of the Pleiades she can see.

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