: By Glenn ChapleThere’s something hypnotic about a double star – two gleaming points of light shining bravely through the surrounding darkness. A triple star is even more mesmerizing. Place a double star and triple star in the same eyepiece field, and the visual effect is stunning. This is what greets the eye when you view the triple/double star combo Struve 2816 and Struve 2819.
: By Francine JacksonOnce again, the sign of the new season is beginning to make its way higher and higher in the sky. As October begins, the Great Square, symbol of fall, is getting easier to find in the southeast.
: By Francine JacksonAt this time of year, even though the season of summer ends this month and fall begins, the sky takes a little longer to shift to its next season. The Summer Triangle is still in a beautiful observing position, not really giving the fall constellations a chance to come to full view. So, while we’re waiting, it might be good to turn back to the north and see what is happening there.
: By Francine JacksonWe normally spend a lot of time enjoying the seasonal constellations, the ones that our ancestors depended on as indicators of changes here on Earth, but we often forget that there is a set of star patterns that are always there, waiting for us when we turn around to the north. These are the circumpolar constellations, the ones that, although their positions do change with time, they seem to travel in a circle centered at the sky’s north pole, and are always visible from our northern latitudes.
: By Glenn ChapleIn the southern part of Cepheus is a pair of naked eye variable stars worthy of note. The first, delta (?), is the prototypical Cepheid variable. It ranges between magnitudes 3.5 and 4.4 in a precise 5.37 day period. The rise from minimum to maximum brightness takes about 1½ days; the fade back to minimum involves an additional four.
: By Jim HendricksonAn asterism in Cepheus that is easy to find in small telescopes or binoculars is comprised of 10 stars between magnitude 6.0 and 9.5 and very closely approximates the shape of the northern sky’s most famous asterism-the Big Dipper
