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Variable Stars in Binos


MarkRadice

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I had been out  two nights in a row before making these observations on Saturday 8 August.  The two preceding late nights were catching up with me so, rather than set up the 14" dob, I decided to set up the camera and make a timelapse of the summer milky transiting past the yew tree and nearby tree line. 

While the camera was clicking away, I got out my 15x50 Canon binoculars and set up the sun lounger.  I felt like a change from the big dob and what better what than to relax in comfort, looking up at the stars.  I used the binos to find the enigmatic star R Corona Borealis.  This unusual star dims from time to time as carbon builds up in its outer atmosphere.  It is normally at or around mag 6 (faint star just visible to the naked eye) but then dims to mag 14 which needs a large telescope to see.  I used the SPA and BAA VSS chart to locate R Cor Bor and it is clearly in a fade.  I shall continue to monitor and look for it reappearing in the field of view.  I compared it with the star chart and estimated it to be mag 9.5.

I then star hopped to X Herculis again using the BAA VSS finder chart.  This was quite a challenge to locate as there appears to be three stars of equal brightness where the chart shows there to be two.  I assumed the northern-most star is the variable as shown on the chart although I will need to check this!  Anyway, by comparing back and forth I estimated this to be approx. mag  8.7.

post-26666-0-00950500-1439501610.jpg

Finder charts for R Cor Bor and X Her

I haven’t made a variable star measurement for some time so this was a real pleasure.  I always enjoy binocular observing – especially with the sun lounger fully reclined and the milky way overhead!  It was also nice taking 2 minutes to pack everything away – far quicker than the big dob!

Anyway, while I had been measuring variable stars, the camera had been busy collecting photons.  I looked at them the next day and, to my horror, the camera only detected the bright stars and not the Milky Way.  It turned out I had the ISO still set at 100 following some daytime shots making  1.5 hours of timelapse photography pretty useless! 

Anyway, a fun night despite the camera fail! 

Clear skies!
 

Mark

PS observing report (and preceding nights' observations are in my journal blog: http://www.refreshingviews.com/yew-tree-observatory/journal/

 

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Hello Mark,

great to see your variable star observations - I hope you'll submit them to the BAA Variable Star Section: http://www.britastro.org/vss/

That way astronomers around the world, amateur and professional, can get hold of them for their research.

R CrB is a particularly interesting one, and has been doing unusual things of late, so is definitely worth keeping at eye on. Have a look here: https://britastro.org/node/6515

Go well!

Jeremy

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Hi Jeremy

I'll be collating up my August report to the various BAA sections later this week (normally lunar and planetary sections) so this'll be my first to the VSS.

Intereting link and I look forward to watching more stellar events.

Clear skies to you.

Mark

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