Per Aspera Ad Astra

Welcome to the next installment of the Astronomical League certification tour. This month, we tackle what I believe to be the easiest of them all: The Double Star Club. Easy – yes, trivial – no. What we have is a list of 100 multiple star systems that you need to seek out and describe what you see. I have stressed the importance of sketching your observations. For this one it is REQUIRED.

This is a fun certification. They are easy to find, and when you find them you know it. Although you may have to wait for the calendar to bring them to the evening sky, they are objects that are easy to fit in with your other observing objectives. There is something for everybody, wide pairs, close pairs, equal pairs, magnitude divergent pairs, and colors…. Hoo boy what colors! Blue & Yellow, Orange & White, and even a triple of Orange & Yellow & Blue. The only real challenge is the separations. They range from 1.7 “ to 709 “. What this means is that one of them is visible naked-eye, and some of them require high magnification and stable skies.

For those of you not fluent in Latin: Per Aspera Ad Astra – Through hard work we reach the stars!