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Epsilon Lyr (Multiple Star, in Lyra)
Observer: Richard Pattie (e-mail: exmedia123@gmail.com)
Instrument: 5-inch other Location: Laguna Beach, California, USA
Light pollution: severe Transparency: good Seeing: excellent
Time: Mon Sep 30 01:34:00 2013 UT Obs. no.: 1894
I am new to viewing doubles and still fairly new to amateur astronomy. After reading other accounts of viewing Eps Lyr my report might stretch credulity, but I swear this was just the way it happened. I live in a heavily light-polluted area, but the air was uncommonly still that night. Using an Orion 5" mak-cass on an SE 6/8 mount, I went to Epsilon Lyrae 1, a double star I had not seen before. I was using a good 13mm eyepiece and, because the air was so stable, it looked like each individual star might also be a double! Added a Barlow, and at 6.5mm was able to confirm my suspicion. This should have been the absolute magnification limit, but I was on a roll, so I swapped in an ES 4.7mm ep and was rewarded with four perfectly still, perfectly round stars with a single diffraction ring around each, the fabled Airy disk. That was at 328x with my little 5" scope! I may never see these exact conditions again, so thought I'd report it. I did look it up afterward, and Epsilon Lyrae 1 is also called the "double-double." Incredibly, the two systems orbit each other. The separations are 2.2" and 2.4" respectively, which confirms that the resolution in my area was extraordinarily good.
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Questions? Problems? E-mail jbc@west.net
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