I've been reading for a while, but I haven't written anything yet.
I introduce myself briefly. My name is Dirk van Uden, I come from Cologne/Germany. I observe Dobson with 12" and with 18".
Beside the visual observation I also do astrophotography.
During the image processing of my data from M3 I noticed a tiny asterism of three, almost equally bright stars arranged in a triangle.
The picture and the enlargement show the position of the group in M3.
North is below, west left.
At the ITV (Vogelsberg Telescope Meeting) i wanted to try to visually pick this beautiful asterism with my new 18" Newton.
It really took three nights to see all three components clearly.
At 340x the seeing in the third night was good enough to see all three stars.
A Co-observer was able to confirm the sighting. In the nights before only the two brightest stars of the trio were clearly visible. Otherwise, the group appeared to be a lively triangle through the seeing.
Is anyone familiar with the trio, is that already described somewhere?
In Simbad I find the single number to the stars.
These are NGC 5272 935 (V=14,88 mag), 962 (V=14,92mag) and CL*NGC 5272 SK 316 (B=14,99mag).
All three are listed as *iC, i.e. belonging to M3.
M3 is no longer optimal, but it does not need a dark sky, but "only" good seeing and sufficient aperture.
It would be nice, if one or the other looks at it and reports which opening was used for the sighting of the group.
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