Yeah, I'd been excited at the prospect of seeing this amazing system.
Real easy to spot, the primary being a naked eye star, and the red
dwarf, as Bob mentioned, being around 11th magnitude. A red dwarf
burns its fuel so slowly that the universe isn't old enough to have
seen one run out of hydrogen. Barnard's Star is the only one I'd seen
before. And this was my first white dwarf - as Burnham put it, the
only one that can be described as easy in our telescopes. The central
stars in planetaries are on their way to becoming white dwarfs, but I
was just reading that by the time they shrink down, their surrounding
envelopes have become too dispersed for us to see them.
The Animal had checked back on 40 Eri and cam up with "the evening of
November 24th, 1979 with a 6-month old C-8 from my front lawn in El
Cerrito! Happened to be my first peek at NGC 1535 also. Logbooks are
wonderful to reminisce." Quoted with hopefully implicit permission.
Just over 23 years ago...great the way these things hold still.
Last night was loaded with extras. We did take a dew break, but the
sky thru most of the night averaged 6.0, and got to 6.3 in the South
on occasion. Seeing was excellent, 5/5, thru more than half the time.
Elena and Craig picked a good night to make a comeback. Jupiter in
Peter's scope during the dew break was like a detailed sketch. There
was a white oval down the middle of the equator some 90 deg ahead of
the GRS, only one I'd ever seen midships on the disk.
One more highlight- 4725 in Coma is an interesting galaxy, with a
bright core and a halo exending some 10' N-S. Out on the SW edge of
its halo was a bright splotch. And just to the SW a bit farther
there's a dim neighbor galaxy, 4712.
It'd been a year since I'd looked at 4565, and there's no getting
enough of this magnificent object. That sharp knife edge and dense
bright core, with that dust lane the length of the galaxy, man. The
whole thing measured some 20' long in the 10mm. This was all in an
11" f/4.5 Dob.
We deserved this one.