Mesmerizing Photos of Astronomical Objects

Adobe PDF format, SkySafari Observing List, and Meade Tour MTF format files for download

In 2001, I wanted to try my hand at writing a Meade Autostar Guided Tour for my LX90 telescope. I chose color-contrast double stars, because Albireo (beta Cygni) was the kind of celestial object that visitors to our public star parties can enjoy under light-polluted skies. I underestimated the difficulty in finding sources of these objects, as many references contained a few, but I could find no substantial list. I began compiling a list of every referenced object of this type that I could find. As the list grew, I decided to expand it to an Excel file with more info than would be appropriate in a Guided Tour file.

One idea that I persued was to find a quantitative way to compare and rank these objects. I found that B-V Color Index data is available for many of these stars. Since this provides a number that represents the color of the star, I reasoned that the difference between the B-V Indexes of the two stars would give a measure of the color contrast. Doubles with a large difference in B-V Indexes should present the best visual color contrast. As I am colorblind, I prefer these quantitative measures to subjective observations. I also listed color descriptions from as many sources as possible, showing how much our perceptions of the colors vary from one observer to another.