Jewel of the Sky
When the change of seasons comes to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan it hardly goes unnoticed. Gone is the plush vegetation of summer that covered the forested landscape; it has been replaced by a rather desolate outline of barren open branches devoid of leaves. At first the new setting seems hopelessly abandoned, but with a closer look and some contemplation you discover that a haunting beauty remains.
Such dramatic contrast is not the sole possession of the earthly scene. The observable universe of the evening sky undergoes a similar transformation. The densely populated caverns of the Summer Milky Way are setting in the west, leaving only the open figures of autumn's constellations that seem quite sparse in comparison.
One look at the 84-hour exposure made by the Hubble Telescope in northern Andromeda helps us to appreciate that this is not really the case, the sky teems with celestial wonders unimagined. However, for the backyard sky-watcher with much more modest equipment, the autumn sky can present a challenge when compiling one's observing list; even the seasoned observer may find the pickings slim. To fill the voids, I always include binary stars among my "deep sky" targets and during the autumn season, Almach is certainly one that cannot be overlooked.
Almach (Gamma Andromedae) is one of the most beautiful objects in the heavens. It is at the top of my observing list whenever it makes it appearance in the evening sky. I have found myself staying up quite late even on summer nights, waiting for it to clear the trees, so that I can get a glimpse. I'm not alone. William Tyler Olcott, in his book "In Starland with a Three-inch Telescope", wrote, "Gamma Andromedae is one of the most beautiful double stars in the heavens; the contrasting color of the two stars is very fine". He gives the colors as "yellow or orange and greenish-blue". The great double star observer, Paul Couteau, writes: "One of the most beautiful systems, orange and emerald". While William Smyth, in his famous Bedford Catalogue, calls it "a splendid double star, A (primary) orange colour and B (secondary) emerald green; and of these colours I feel pretty positive, although the high authority of Herschel and Struve has pronounced them to be yellow and blue". In my 80mm f/15 refractor at about 100X, I see them as bright yellow and deep blue. More then any other star, Gamma Andromedae gives me the feeling that I'm am seeing a star and it's planet. It's only an illusion, but a very nice one and it is enhanced by the knowledge that the "planet" has a "moon". In his "Handbook of Double Stars", Edward Crossley wrote : "The duplicity of (Gamma) B was discovered by Otto Struve in 1842." And Smyth verifies this saying: "Mr. Bailey put in my hand a letter which he had received from Mr. Struve, in October, 1842, announcing the unlooked for tidings that he had detected Gamma Andromedae to be a triple, and that the companion is composed of two stars of equal size, separated by an interval of less than 0.5 arcseconds." That separation has decreased to .42 arcseconds in 2003, well beyond the resolution of my 3". However, it is always nice to view two members of this beautiful solar system.