{"id":33671,"date":"2022-07-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=33671"},"modified":"2022-07-21T14:14:27","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T14:14:27","slug":"binocular-tour-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/2022\/07\/20\/binocular-tour-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Binocular tour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The sky is full of kites and aeroplanes, but don’t forget the massive stars too<\/p>\n\n

With Steve Tonkin <\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

1. Kemble\u2019s Kite
Take a line from mag. +3.4 Segin (Epsilon (\u03b5) Cassiopeiae) through mag. +4.6 Iota (\u03b9) Cassiopeiae and extend it another 7\u00c6 to mag. +6.4 V805 Cassiopeiae, which will look a deep yellow in your binoculars. It is the brightest of a 1.5\u00c6-long asterism of 10 stars of mag. +8.5 and brighter in the form of a diamond kite. The Kite has an easily splittable double star at its northern tip and a tail flowing southwards towards Perseus. <\/p>\n\n

2. The Queen\u2019s Kite
Our next target is even easier. Locate mag. +4.7 Chi (\u03c7) Cassiopeiae which is the brightest of a pentagon of stars that surrounds a mag. +7.3 star 0.75\u00c6 to the southeast. The tail extends southward for more than 2\u00c6 from the most easterly star of this pentagon. Note the varied colours of the stars: the two brighter \u2018wing-tip\u2019 stars are yellow, while all the fainter ones are brilliant white. <\/p>\n\n

3. Rho Cas
Our next object, Rho (\u03c1) Cassiopeiae, is a yellow hypergiant. If it was where our Sun is, it would extend beyond the orbit of Mars! It normally varies between mag. +4.6 and +5.4, but every few decades it reddens and falls below 6th magnitude. This last happened 76 years ago, so is worth looking out for. <\/p>\n\n

4. The Queen\u2019s Aeroplane
Golden yellow mag. +5.0 star 4 Cassiopeiae marks the starboard wingtip of this small but colourful asterism of eight stars, all at mag. +8.0 or brighter. The other wingtip, a degree to the west, is mag. +6.6 blue-white V649 Cas. The curved \u2018fuselage\u2019 extends a degree northwards to a mag. +6.7 orange-red star.<\/p>\n\n

5. O\u03a3\u03a3 1
You don\u2019t really need 70mm binoculars for our next target; it\u2019s easily visible in 20mm if you prefer, but the larger instrument brings out the colour contrast in this very pretty optical double star. Start at mag. +3.2 Errai (Gamma (\u03b3) Cephei) and pan 2.5\u00c6 towards Segin. Here is our widely separated (73 arcsecond) target. The brighter, mag. +7.2 member is orange-red, while the fainter, mag +7.7 companion is a yellowish white.<\/p>\n\n

6. Herschel\u2019s Garnet Star
The deep orange supergiant star, mag. +4.0 Mu (\u03bc) Cephei is named for William Herschel, whose description is as apt today as it was when it was written more than 200 years ago: \u201ca very fine deep garnet colour\u2026 a most beautiful object, especially if we look for some time at a white star before we turn to it.\u201d This is one of the largest known stars; Jupiter\u2019s orbit would easily fit inside it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kites and aeroplanes, but don\u2019t forget the massive stars too<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":33972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"54","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"54","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_54-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_54-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"August-2022","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"August-2022","purple_external_id":"August-2022-54-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"August-2022-54-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000086555||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000086555||","purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.207","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.207","purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.207","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.207","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"075fab74-0a21-4201-866a-899d6c41c40c","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[14],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59.png","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59.png",1364,812,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59-300x179.png",300,179,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59-768x457.png",768,457,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59-1024x610.png",800,477,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59.png",1364,812,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-11-at-17.25.59.png",1364,812,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Kites and aeroplanes, but don\u2019t forget the massive stars too","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33671"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33671"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34076,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33671\/revisions\/34076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}