Observing Project - The STAR List

Mark Deprest and I have embarked on a year long observing project.  This will be to photograph and sketch all of the "STAR" (Small Telescope Asterism Roster) objects.  The STAR list was started by author Philip S. Harrington and the original objects were called "Harrington" objects.  These were listed in his book "Touring The Universe Through Binoculars".  As other observers contributed more and more objects Philip changed the name to the STAR list.  Later objects were listed in the book "The Deep Sky - An Introduction".  A total of 29 objects are currently listed (there is some suspicion that STAR 5 and STAR 17 are the same object - this has been confirmed by Philip)  Neither Mark or I have any connection with Mr. Harrington except for reading his books but I must say that both of these books are great and have a prominent spot in my astro library.

This looks to be a wonderful group of asterisms that are all large to medium in size.  These lend themselves to binoculars and small telescopes with wide fields.  Sporting names like Kemble's Cascade, The Golf Putter and The Queens Kite they are spread out all over the sky visible from the northern hemisphere.

This will be a long term project - it is not practical to think that good sketches and photos can be taken in the space of weeks or months.  What I hope to do here is keep a running log of the work being done and preview some of the results.  I am hopeful that a nice club program can be made from the final results of our efforts. 

The planned list, caged from Mr. Harrington's books, looks like this:

As we go along I will make any corrections to the list that are necessary.  We will list the full information for the sketches and the photos.

This is going to be especially nice for me as I have not seen most of these asterisms.  In point of fact, I saw STAR 3, Kemble's Cascade, for the first time at the beginning of March.  I was using a pair of inexpensive 10 X 46 binoculars and I kept returning and just gazing at the tumbling line of stars - it was amazing!

Mark is a highly skilled observer with a great knowledge of the night sky.  I will unashamedly glom onto his coattails and learn from him as we progress with this work.  

Mark Deprest on "Star Colors",

Drawings made at the eyepiece can be wonderfully accurate representations of what can be seen through the various optical aids that we use to view the night sky. But can be somewhat disappointing when set next to the "detail – rich" astrophotographs of the same object. A simple black on white drawing that is scanned then inverted to give a white on black image makes a huge difference in the visual impact of the drawing. But, if there was a way to show the subtle differences in the "color" of the stars, in these drawings then we would have very accurate, as well as visually exciting representations of what one could expect to see when one puts their eye to the ocular. This is what I wanted to accomplish in my drawings for this project; one of the impressive things that I have always observed in clusters and tight groups of stars is the differences in the "star – colors." The problem was how to add "star – color" to black and white drawings, with compromising the integrity of the "At the Eyepiece" drawing. After experimenting with a number of different methods, I found one that actually produced very accurate results. I will describe it further on in this text, but I think you will find it, not only visually pleasing but also quite accurate.

Since, "star – color" can be very subjective and some observers I know rarely see any colors other than black sky and white stars. I wanted to make sure that the stars I gave any "color" to, very strongly showed that particular hue. Very quickly I realized that there were only four different "colors" that I could discern when noticing any contrast in the stars’ hues. Blue, yellow, red and white, (wow, the primary colors with a default) were the only truly obvious colors I could grasp, the only caveat being their respective intensities. I also noticed that the center of even the reddest stars still looked white to me. That’s when the method for "coloring" my stars came to me. I needed to give the outer edges of the stars color and the centers needed to stay white. This was accomplished by producing a negative (white on black) of my original pencil and paper drawings and a simple paint program that had an "airbrush" option. Using a circle stylist or brush and varying the size, I was able to get that edged color fading out but was left with a deeply colored center, simply reduce the brush size and change the color back to white, and "BINGO" stars with color.

The color of these stars was determined at the scope also using very detailed charts produced with a planetarium type program and copious notes taken at the scope. These notes and the charts helped me determine the intensity each colored star should have. I hope you will enjoy them.

The paint program I used was MGI Photo Suite and the planetarium program used was Guide 7.0 by Project Pluto.

PROJECT RESULTS:

• STAR 3

• STAR 4

• STAR 6

• STAR 16

• STAR 17

• STAR 18

• STAR 19

• STAR 20

• STAR 21

• STAR 22

• STAR 25

Keep an eye on this page after the new moon weekends and I will try to post updates as weather and available time permit.