At one of our club's star parties this week, someone asked me about the star cluster NGC 2218 in Auriga. His SkySafari has, word for word, the description in the Night Sky Observer's Guide:
"NGC 2281 is bright, large, and loose with three dozen stars. A dozen 10th to 11th magnitude stars are elongated E-W, the fainter stars spreading southward. A diamond-shaped asterism is at center, each of its four stars having a fainter companion. A faint star of about 13th magnitude is visible within the diamond. The northernmost double in the diamond displays a fine contrast of reddish and blue stars. This nice cluster is often neglected by observers."
Note especially that each of the four diamond stars is said to have a companion, but he could only see companions to two of the stars. As far as I can tell, only the eastern and southeastern stars of the diamond have companions. Can I get folks with large scopes take the challenge to see if the other two diamond stars have companions?
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