Mirfak (HD 20902)
Tonight I turned the DWARF Mini toward Mirfak (HD 20902), the brightest star in Perseus. I've seen Perseus many times while working through the northern sky, but I'm finding that I enjoy stopping on the brighter stars and giving them some attention instead of always using them as a way to get to another target. The conditions in Ottawa were decent, with Bortle 7 skies, 3/5 seeing, and 3/7 transparency.
I used the DWARF Mini with the Astro Filter, shooting 15-second exposures at a gain of 60. I planned for 258 frames and managed to collect 252, so I was only six frames short of the full run. That gave me 1 hour and 3 minutes of total integration time. The session went smoothly, and I was happy to get almost all the data I had planned for.
Mirfak is a yellow-white supergiant and sits in a particularly rich part of Perseus. There are plenty of other stars around it, and that makes the field more interesting than simply looking at one bright point of light. It's also a good reminder that a star that looks fairly ordinary from here can be a huge and luminous object when you consider what it actually is.
Mirfak (HD 20902)
Tonight I turned the DWARF Mini toward Mirfak (HD 20902), the brightest star in Perseus. I've seen Perseus many times while working through the northern sky, but I'm finding that I enjoy stopping on the brighter stars and giving them some attention instead of always using them as a way to get to another target. The conditions in Ottawa were decent, with Bortle 7 skies, 3/5 seeing, and 3/7 transparency.
I used the DWARF Mini with the Astro Filter, shooting 15-second exposures at a gain of 60. I planned for 258 frames and managed to collect 252, so I was only six frames short of the full run. That gave me 1 hour and 3 minutes of total integration time. The session went smoothly, and I was happy to get almost all the data I had planned for.
Mirfak is a yellow-white supergiant and sits in a particularly rich part of Perseus. There are plenty of other stars around it, and that makes the field more interesting than simply looking at one bright point of light. It's also a good reminder that a star that looks fairly ordinary from here can be a huge and luminous object when you consider what it actually is.