Now that the GRAS telescopes have been relocated to Officer, Victoria (near Melbourne), I was able to start the calibration phase of the project in earnest. 

As per the original plan, I first intend to measure a series of calibration pairs, as derived from the book Observing and Measuring Visual Double Stars by Bob Argyle.  Chapter 2 of this tome includes a number of tabulated pairs that can be resolved using various size telescopes.  Table 2.5 for instance gives pairs for 30cm aperture telescopes, while Table 2.6 gives pairs for 40cm scopes. 

Looking at these tables presented my first challenge. 

Using CCD cameras with large aperture telescopes means you can capture images of fairly faint pairs.  The project was intended to focus on stars with magnitudes between 9 and 14.  However most of the calibration pairs listed in Bob's book were between 6 and 9.  I was concerned that this might mean they would be too bright to get decent images of.

I started with Table 2.5, given the aperture of the scope, and based upon the time of year (April 2011), selected 3 target pairs to work with, as follows: 

As you can see, these are all relatively bright.  However, I need to start somewhere!

What's next: Taking the first calibration images.