I'm reposting this from over at CN, as there's less crossover between the two forums than I thought:
On the second night of an ongoing stretch of clear nights, Jerry Oltion and I observed the microquasar SS 433 in Aquila.
I had been intrigued with this object for a lot of years, for an odd reason--as a teenager, I was a member of the Astronomy Book Club, and David H. Clark's The Quest for SS 433 was one of the featured selections. I never got (or even read) the book, as it seemed more technical than I was willing to puzzle through at the time, but I was intrigued by the titular object; it was described on the cover of the book as "the astronomical phenomenon of the century" (a pretty hyperbolic claim!). And then I forgot about it for about 20 years.
Fast forward to this century, when I was browsing through the 2nd Edition of Uranometria. Lo and behold, SS 433 is plotted in the atlas! After a bit of research, I managed to unearth not only a good non-technical explanation of what SS 433 actually is, I also managed to scare up an AAVSO chart for it; it's listed there as V1343 Aquilae.
Armed with the chart, I went out on the night of June 26 to observe; targets also included Pluto (successful) and NGC 6231 in Scorpius (not successful; too low and in the horizon muck). The Eureka Ridge site here is about 1/2-hour SE of Eugene, and in a blue zone. It's the "lesser" of our two primary dark sites light-pollution wise, but it's half the distance of the other site and has much better horizons.
6/26-6/27/16
EUREKA RIDGE
MOON: 23 days (Last Quarter), rose at 12:57 AM
SEEING: 7
TRANSPARENCY: 8
SQM: 21.4
NELM: not checked
WEATHER CONDITIONS: temps in low 60s, little to moderate dew; slight breeze
Equipment: 12.5" f/5 Discovery Dobsonian; 14mm Explore Scientific 82* (112x, 42' TFOV) and 6mm TeleVue Radian (262x, 12' TFOV) eyepieces
12:27
SS 433 (Aql): Not seen at 112x. At 262x, puts the micro in microquasar. Flickering in and out of visibility. Magnitude approximately 14.2. Located off the SF tip of tiny diamond of stars (about 1' x 0.4'), which is elongated N-S, minor axis almost due P-F. Star on NF end of diamond is brightest (mag 11.5), other three about a magnitude dimmer. The major axis of the diamond is about 1’. SS 433 is off the SF tip of diamond by about 1'. Not much to look at, but amazing to know what it is!
