An Olympic Test for Your Vision

In our last article, we looked at the Hyades star cluster.  Today, in the spirit of next month’s Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, we present three pairs of stars in the Hyades to test your visual acuity.   Give these pairs a try on an upcoming clear night.  And if you can resolve them with your unaided eye, then, well, give yourself a medal!
Preliminaries
Before you go to the medal round, see if you can resolve the pair called the “Deltas” in the northern branch of the “V” of the Hyades.  There are two stars here, and a third a little further away.  With average eyesight (or a pair of prescription glasses), most observers can resolve the Deltas with the unaided eye in reasonably dark sky.  If you succeed, then congratulate yourself.  You’ve qualified for the finals.

A map of the Hyades star cluster, adapted from Stargazing for Beginners: A Binocular Tour of the Night Sky

Bronze
You get a bronze medal if you can split the “Sigmas”, just 1 degree southeast of Aldebaran.  These stars are magnitude 4.7 and 5.1, and separated by 7.2′.  If you can split the Double-Double in Lyra, you can probably handle the Sigmas.  If so, try for the silver…

Silver
If you can split the “Kappas”, you get the silver.  These stars are north of the “V” (see the map above).  These stars are 5.6′ apart, but are made more challenging by their difference in brightness.  One star is magnitude 4.2, the other, 5.3.  That’s a factor of 2.8.  If you can split these, you’ve earned your silver medal.  Think you can do better?  Then try for the gold…

Gold
The gold medal goes to you if you can resolve 80 and 81 Tauri.  You need dark skies for these: they’re just on the edge of visual detection at magnitudes 5.6 and 5.5, and they’re separated by just 8′.

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If you have trouble with even the bronze pair of stars, or if your sky is a little too bright to see these stars at all, don’t worry.  Just grab a pair of binoculars and enjoy the view of the Hyades, the Pleiades, and the nearby sights in Orion and Canis Major. This is a great region for taking astrophotographs with a digital camera (no telescope required).  If you’d like to learn how to do this, click here to learn more…

Note: These gold-silver-bronze pairs of optical doubles were suggested in Steven James O’Meara’s lyrical survey of the Caldwell objects.