NOT SIRIUS-B.... JUST LOOKS LIKE...
I got the "PUP"! ......I thought so but it cannot be.
If you see this site before, you would know how my feeling changed.
I put my comment as follows.
| I am sure that what I photoed was something else! But I think what I saw
was Sirius B. The first time I saw the Pup was autumn in 2002 at a star party with my friends, through 2 telescopes. Both were refractores and one was only 9cm aperture!!. Perhaps nobody believes it except for the participants of the star party. We checked the location and it was truly Sirius B. It was a super-seeing morning! At that time, we could not see it with big reflectors. I am not an expert but perhaps spiders are apt to prevent from seeing it. I did not bring my telescope then but I thought I could have seen it with my 105mm refractor. Since then I challenged and chased only SiriusB. I challenged and failed so many times. Whenever I visit some observatories, I try to ask for Sirius. Wherever, whenver and whatever! I was obsessed!! I did not see anything else, only Sirius ! In the fall of 2004, I saw it at last! But I was alone and nobody believed. I thought it better not to mention about it any more. However, I often gazed Sirius as long as I could see from evening till mornng. In 2005, I looked at it almost every day if the weather was good. The air in winter is always bad here but I could not wait till spring when the seeing is the best of the year. And the super spring had come! |
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| March 21 | I checked more about the image and found this coincidence. |
| March 17 | Please forgive my withdraw. Now that Sirius-B is separating year by year, soon many astrophotographers will take Sirius-B. Before my image is denied then, I would like to deny it now. It must be something that happened to come out accidentally! |
| March 15: | Now, I am beginning to feel it may not be SiriusB 1. It's too light (bright) SiriusB is much darker than this. It could not be appeared so bright with the system. 2. It's too red. It's a white dwarf, which should look white blue. Though its altitude is low enough to make stars look redish. 3. It's a little too far from SiriusA. The limb of the Jupiter in the next page is too unclear and it may be a little smaller. Then the distance in my page is too much. |
| March 11: | I am still unconfident. Is this really SiriusB? I am beginning to know how great if it is. |
| March 8: | Please read the following. |
| Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and it is famous for its dark companion,
Sirius-B. It is far darker and fainter than Sirius-A, which we can see
brightly with our naked eyes, though it is actually hotter and heavier
than A. It is a "white dwarf". It is said to be very difficult to see Sirius-B and most handbooks say that we need a telescope that has diameter of more than 25cm to see it. YET, I have seen some times with small refractors with only 8cm-11cm and it is getting easier year by year. I guess it is because the two stars orbit each other with a 50-year period and it is separating now. It must have been certainly hard to see them split before but now the visual distance between the two is almost 7 arc seconds. I told some of my astronomical mates that I have seen Sirius-B but they are skeptical. So I decided to take pictures. March may be the best season in Japan to see and take the split Sirius because the seeing is good. I live in an apartment and the area of the sky I can see from the small balcony is really really small. It is limited only to the low south, where there are many buildings over the horizon. The sky is always smoggy and white. I set my telescope almost everyday and looked at Sirius, gazed and searched for the Pup. On the fifth of March, I found it very dim but soon fainted. I took pictures but I thought it impossible. I gave up. The next day, it was sunny too and the seeing was not bad. "I'll get you today!" The little one was easily found. "There you are!" I saw a little while and set a camera. I started to take photos but it did not come out at all in the glare of A. Changing exposure time, touching the focus knob, I took more than forty shots and AT LAST I got it!! I could not stop smiling. The next day, I felt unease since I am not an expert about double stars (I know almost nothing) and I had to check if it was really Pup. Where is it now? How far is it? I searched on the Internet. The position was good but what made me unconfident the most was that no sites had the same kind of images, only sketches or NASA's special image. Is it something else???, which happened to appear there? Of course it has the possibility to be something else. I wrote an e-mail to my friend who loves and knows well about double stars and he said simply "Yes, this is IT"I really felt relief. Here I would like to express my gratitude to my friend, Kazunori Takahara. |
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data: Mar.6,2005 22:27:54(JST) Pentax 105SDHF(f=700mm) + Pentax XP3.8mm eyepiece + Nikon D70 equatorial mount: EM200 Takahashi exposure: 1/1.3(s) place: Osaka, Japan North is down, east is right..I guess. |
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