Studying stars?

[Manok101]

I thought that since my area is not the best for studying DSOs, and many nights I just like looking at stars, I was wondering about either looking at binary stars, or variable stars, does anyone know of a list of the shortest well known both of binary orbit, and the shortest well known variable change in brightness? Are stars that hard to capture in a dob with photos? I figure I could snap the photos, and use stacking software to get rid of the trails, can this be done? I figure I wouldn't need very long exposure times or anything since I am just taking pictures of stars.

[Capricorn]

Added an attachment of some information I had.

Not sure if you will be able to read it as I created it under Open Office aand saved in .doc format.

Should be a table or three of variables.

[Capricorn]

Is there something I need to do to show the presence of an attachment ?

I see nothing in the previous psot and I have noticed the same when other posts have said there was an attachment, basically nothing.

[umadog]

Stacking is a technique for adding up a lot of good short exposures to get a better average image. If the exposures themselves contain a lot of blur (which is what star trails are) then stacking isn't going to get rid of it. There's no good way to get rid of star trails. You need to take a well-guided image without star trails instead. As far as I know, the orbits of all visual double stars are measured in at least years to decades. If you want something stellar that moves quickly then try for Barnard's star: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star There are variables that are short period. Cepheids are one such class: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star

If you want to get into AP in any way at all then you're going to need an equatorially mounted scope. Messing around with a Dob is going to be a lot harder.

[JamesF]

There's a list of double stars and other potential targets posted each month in the monthly guides section:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/154713-july-2012-celestial-calendar-observing-notes-co-dave-mitsky/

James

[LukeSkywatcher]

Stacking is a technique for adding up a lot of good short exposures to get a better average image

I did this on my 1st ever image of Adromeda and it really stood out in the widefield image. I think i took 12x5s exposures and it was clearly visible.

[cantab]

I wonder just how faint stars you'd be able to image using the webcam technique popular for planets? Simple way to answer would be to try it and see. The small area of view might prove a problem for variable star observing, where you'd want non-variable stars in the field to compare the variable to. Such comparisons are commonly done visually but I don't know why you couldn't use the approach with images.

Certainly many people spend plenty of time tracking the changes of variables, or splitting various double stars. Though as another has said, you'll need to spend some years observing to detect changes in the relative positions of members of optical binary stars.

[Manok101]

well i wasn't looking for a time frame, just one where I'd be able to notice a change in my lifetime. The photogrophy was just a idea, though I do remember hearing of a technique to get rid of star trails without an auto guider, but I could have misheard.

[umadog]

Presumably that would be a technique to avoid generating the star trails in the first place. On alt/az mounts there is a device known as a field de-rotator, which will do pretty much what it says (remember the field rotates if you don't have an EQ mount...).