Backyard OR - Nu Scorpii

I've gotten way too rusty, so last night I dusted off my scope of
near-optimal aperture (.909 felix aka 10 inches) to see what needs to
be done to prepare for Calstar ( this year I'm determined to have it
all dialed in well in advance). Just as well too, laser dead, RDF
battery dead, mirror covered with unfortunate sneeze residue I had
forgotten about, blecch, lots to be done. But anyhow as twilight came
on I was looking at some bright doubles (61 Cyg has great gold color
against twilight BTW) when I recalled the recent Nu Scorpii thread,
thought I had better go see if it was still there ;-) I'd seen and
sketched it with a 4" f/15 refractor from Coe, split both pairs then.

Backyard is never grab and go for me, there's always some neighbor
light or tree or something to deal with. I found a spot beside the
house that gave me about 15 degrees of SSW sky and propped up some
left over sheets of plywood from a garage re-roof just completed to
block out the worst of the intruding lights.

Seeing was variable, 6/10 pickering at best fleeting moments, but the
dim pair easily split and the closer bright pair obviously double,
though never cleanly split @ 270x. Given the seeing, I'm sure the view
would have been improved in the 4" - I think I need to make an
aperture mask for the 10" for situations like this one.

Anyhow, I popped from Jupiter to Nu back and forth for about 45 mins
in case either target had a great seeing moment. Jupiter looks very
different from the last time I looked at it (a long time ago), the NEB
very wide, with a couple of swooshes like water-ski wakes coming off
it, a couple of equatorial stripes and a dim SEB, the rest pale and
washed out, swimming on the limbs, but still nice to see. I had hoped
to see some milky way from this new spot by the house as it rolled
into view but it was not to be, the moon was coming, M9 was just a dim
smudge, so I looked at M24 for a bit and packed it up.

So there remained this mystery about what Mark had read about Nu in Burnham's:

'I know I've split the pairs, but years ago. I was surprised reading in
the text Burnham writing "I requested Professor C.A. Young to examine it
with the splendid 9.4 inch Clark refractor of the Dartmouth Collect
Observatory. He examined it several times, and at last when the air was
very steady could not even notch it.."'

Alexander had it - the quote was from S.W. Burnham in the 1870's. The
older Burnham had first discovered the A-B pair with a 6" for which he
received many kudos at the time, and no small feat either, as the WDS
catalog has the A-B separation in 1873 as 0.3" ( and 1.3" in 2003
which is why we can split it now. Interestingly the PA is little
changed, we must be roughly in the plane of its orbit, this'll be a
fun pair to watch over the next few centuries ;-)). I couldn't find a
reference which gave this pair's period, anyone have an idea?

There are interesting stories aplenty around Prof. Young and the 9.4"
Clark scope - in 1872 he took the 12 foot long beastie all the way to
Wyoming to, among other things, conduct experiments observing through
polarizing filters (hey Richard!). Next time I'm whining about moving
a 40 lb. scope I need to remember that ;-)

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