Of twins, our Sun, and what we see

Out at 4 am – clear – average seeing . . .

Castor and Pollux – the reversed twins – were they swapped at birth in the hospital? - are fascinating. I had not noticed it before, but Castor – although the Alpha twin – is clearly fainter than Pollux – the Beta star. What's more, Castor is a beautiful double, best revealed in the LX90 with a 9 mm eyepiece . The brighter star is very white – well, Castor is white. Pollux has a slightly yellow tinge. But the brighter of the pair Castor A and B is snowy white – it's companion has a tinge of something – maybe green.

Love the Eskimo! Somehow this morning it looked like it's pictures – not in detail – but the gestalt. Sort of reminded me of a miniature Crab nebula, rather than a traditional ring. I like the double-star effect – that is, there's a perfect twin of it nearby – except the twin is sharp and in focus – the nebula, is, of course, fuzzy.

Speaking of in focus – I found it really interesting to slowly focus on M35. This put a special emphasis on the layers of brightness. Well out of focus only the brightest stars show. Precisely in focus you can see the most faint. Worked best on the 19mm W70.

Switching to Rigel, I had trouble spotting it's companion at first. Really seemed faint and close. Rigel is dominant – very dominant. But as the pre-dawn sky lightened, it got easier. Best seen about 5:45 am when only one or two stars in Orion's sword were still visible to the naked eye. Left scope on to check in daylight. (Behind a tree now, so can't follow systematically – stay tuned.)

Random thought – Almost every star we see with our naked eye is brighter than our Sun! (I need to get the specifics on this, but put our Sun out at 30 light years and it becomes a Mag 5 star. That's the limit for casual naked eye work in my backyard – yet I know there are very few stars visible to the naked eye that are closer than 30 light years, so . . . . need to get get some hard numbers to verify, but I find this a fascinating fact. Probably read it somewhere and have forgotten ;-)