AAQ Special Interest Sections

Double Stars

Welcome to the Double Star Section of the AAQ, dedicated to the enjoyment of observing double and multiple stars.

You can take in an introduction to Double Stars and then return here for a list of books, journals and web references.

When you are ready to practice what you've read and see some beautiful and challenging sights, we'd invite you to take part in the AAQ Resolution Survey. By simply using a telescope, your eyes and some easy to learn techniques you can discover more about your equipment and the sky, and contribute to some useful astronomical research.

Further Information on Double Stars

Most books on astronomy have sections on double and multiple stars, and there are some specialist volumes worth a look. Bob Argyle, current President of the Webb Society (which has an active double star section), has edited a comprehensive book on observing and measuring double stars. It’s in the AAQ library and you can find a review of it in the Library section. Although quite technical, it has a good introduction to double star astronomy, why they are worth observing, and some history of double star observers. It’s well worth the read. The bi-monthly Sky and Space magazine has a double star column authored by Richard Jaworski. And there are many good web sites. Go to the Sky and Telescope site at http://skytonight.com/, enter “double star” in the query box at the top, hit “Go”, and it will direct you to a number of interesting and informative double star articles. A new quarterly journal of double star observations can be found at http://www.jdso.org/.

Argyle, Bob. Observing and measuring visual double stars. Springer, 2004

Burnham’s Celestial Handbook. Dover, 1978.

Haas, Sissy. Double Stars for Small Telescopes: More Than 2,100 Stellar Gems for Backyard Observers. Sky Publishing, 2006.

Hartung’s Astronomical Objects for Southern Telescopes, 2nd Ed., revised by David Malin and David Frew, Melbourne University Press, 1995.

Menzel, Donald and Pasachoff, Jay. A field guide to the stars and planets. 2nd Ed. revised, Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

Mullaney, James. Double and multiple stars, and how to observe them. Springer, 2005.

Norton’s Star Atlas, 19th Ed. ed. Ian Ridpath, Prentice Hall, 1998

The web is awash with sites that deal with all aspects of double and multiple stars, from those of enthusiastic amateurs, to amateur associations, and on to the professional and semi-professional sites. Listed below are some sites that we have found useful, under various subject headings.

Seeing Double: The basics of double stars and why observing them is fun and useful. An article from the Sky and Telescope website (under “Celestial objects – double stars”). http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/doublestars/3396726.html

Observing Double Stars for Fun and Science: An introduction to the measurement of separation and position angle by amateurs. Another Sky and Telescope article. http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/doublestars/3304341.html

Observing Double Stars: A gentle introduction from the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. http://www.tucsonastronomy.org/PDF/BSIG/07_Observing_Double_Stars.pdf (170kb)

Introduction to Double Stars: Some more simple background on doubles. http://www.geocities.com/ariane1au/Page029002.htm

Pretty Double Stars for Everyone: A Sky and Telescope article, covering 42 nice doubles visible when Orion is high in the sky (summer in Australia). http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/doublestars/3304626.html

More Pretty Double Stars: The follow-up Sky and Telescope article, for the Australian winter, with 54 doubles listed. Though both this and the previous list are Northern hemisphere oriented, there are plenty visible in the southern skies. http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/doublestars/3304631.html

Southern Double Star Gems: Also from Sky and Telescope, a compilation of 13 doubles by Richard Jaworski, Director of the Double Star Section of the Astronomical Society of NSW and writer of the double star column in Sky and Space magazine. http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/doublestars/3073201.html

The Spirit of 33: A project to observe doubles and report on the results. Includes lists of doubles in many parts of the sky. http://www.s33.org/

Double Stars to Follow: A short list but with interesting comments, from the Prairie Astronomy Club in the US. Some of the stars are too far north to observe from Brisbane. http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org/dblstar1.htm

600 Multiple Stars: If you run out of other lists, this should keep you going for a while! Assembled by a group of interested amateurs, based to a large extent on Burnham’s Celestial Handbook, and arranged by constellation. You can copy this list into a word processing document for future use. ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/astro/dbases/stars/multistr.txt

Find Double Stars: A great, and very simple, search engine for finding doubles by constellation and separation. http://www.virtualcolony.com/sac/star-search-form.html

Sky Charts (Cartes du Ciel): Excellent free planetarium software downloadable from this site, with good documentation. One of the catalogues that can be downloaded is the Washington Double Star catalogue. Stars from this catalogue are rendered in the sky image with small lines indicating the position angle of the double. You can use these to select doubles for observing. Right clicking on the star and selecting “Identification” brings up detailed information on magnitudes, separation, position angle etc. http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html

The Washington Double Star Catalogue: This is the definitive listing and reference. http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/wdstext.html

Astronomical Society of NSW

http://www.asnsw.com/sections/ds.htm

Astronomical Society of Southern Africa: includes a downloadable introduction to double star observing, and monthly observing lists:

http://www.saao.ac.za/assa/html/33_doublestar.html

The Webb Society: well known for its double star activities. http://www.webbsociety.freeserve.co.uk/notes/doublest01.html

Hanwell Community Observatory ( UK): double star section. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/hanwellobservatory/double_stars.htm

Brayebrook Observatory ( UK): double star section (appears to be temporarily unavailble...April 2007)http://www.brayebrookobservatory.org/BrayObsWebSite/HOMEPAGE/DOUBLESTARS.html

Fuzzy Splitting: A downloadable pdf article by Spanish observer Luis Arguelles on his method of using fuzzy logic to determine if a double of particular characteristics can be split with a particular telescope. It also gives the address from which his simple program can be downloaded. http://www.carbonar.es/s33/Fuzzy-splitting/Fuzzy-Splitting.pdf (181kb)

Close Double Star Separation Calculator: Another program which can be used to determine if a double of particular characteristics can be split with a particular telescope. http://astro.geekjoy.com/calcs/rescalc.html

dblCalc Double Star Separation Calculator: Yet another split predictor, this time with simulated images of the double. http://earth.ihwy.com/~barbour/jeff/software/c++/dblCalc.html

Binary Star from the Wikipedia on-line encyclopaedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star

Double Stars – General Index. A collection of articles on various aspects of double stars. http://www.geocities.com/ariane1au/Page029a.htm

The Spirit of 33 – Selected Articles: Links to downloadable articles on various aspects of doubles. http://www.carbonar.es/s33/articles.html

The colours of double stars: A very interesting and informative on the colours of double stars. http://www.geocities.com/ariane1au/Page029c.htm

A general article on star colours, with some particular references to doubles, can be found at the same site: http://www.geocities.com/ariane1au/Page029b.htm

Orbits of 150 Binaries: Drawings of the orbits of 150 binary stars. http://www.dibonsmith.com/orbits.htm

Journal of Double Star Observations: A recently started US quarterly journal of papers and articles on double star observation. http://www.jdso.org/

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Astronomical Association of Queensland 2006. www.aaq.org.au