Get Sirius! I'm jealous. I've been trying to get Sirius for a few years myself. I've been able to get Antares but not that one. My notes say 7.4" at 104 PA for 2006, but don't know the source. Gets easier every day, right? Thanks for the inspiration and congratulations. Jack Jones Phoenix AZ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Coe" <stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx> To: <amastro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 11:38 PM Subject: [AZ-Observing] I split Sirius tonight Howdy all; After trying to split Sirius for the past several years, I did it tonight. My backyard observatory has a newly installed Nexstar 11 GPS. I have always appreciated the excellent optical performance of this SCT. And tonight it proved it once again. It is a somewhat hazy night in Phoenix Arizona and we have often found that to be the nights of best seeing. I would certainly say that is true this evening. At first I spent some time on the Moon and found that powers of 233X and 280X were very useful. There was lots of detail in and around Sinus Iridium and by 10 PM Sirius was just about right on the meridian, so I thought I would give it a go. I had trouble finding a good point of focus and then I tried moving the scope so that Sirius was out of the field at 375X, focusing on the stars in that field very carefully and then returning Sirius to the center of the view. This method worked right away, because I saw a star about 10 arcseconds from the brightest star as soon as I looked into the 7.5mm Lanthanum eyepiece. The star was just outside the bright disk of Sirius and it appeared off blue, but I am certain that is a contrast effect, with Sirius, for crying out loud! I took a moment and moved the scope a little bit to determine an estimated position angle of the companion star I was seeing. That turned out to be easy since the star is dead east of Sirius A. I had not looked at any source of information about the position since I wanted to only know that once I had seen a companion. So, I came in the house, searched the Internet and found that sure enough the companion, Sirius B, is indeed at a PA of 85 degrees or so. I am very happy after being patient for several years as Sirius B pulls away from Sirius A so that I could split it. It is nice to plan an observation and then have it come true. Clear Skies to us all; Steve Coe -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list. -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.