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Herschel's Garnet Star

rockystar

By rockystar
in Getting Started With Observing

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rockystar

rockystar

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Just been out viewing with the local Astro Society - it's not a dark site, quite near to Manchester, so the LP is pretty bad and obviously the moon was up. One of the things I wanted to see was the Garnet Star, as the other night my daughter said she wanted to see a red star, but I didn't know where to look. I sought this one out, but it wasn't as red as I was expecting, it was more of a rich orange. Is this because of the LP and Moon, or does it change colour, or is it just not as red as I'm expecting (saw Hind's Crimson Star last winter, and that was pretty impressively red - I was expecting similar). Or could it be that I wasn't even looking at the right star (pretty sure I was though)?

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Dave In Vermont

Dave In Vermont

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I'm not certain of the location of your quarry, but I've found you a good substitute - Hind's Crimson Star. As well as a pdf. about it:

R Leporis.pdf

And a very nice picture of this:

Hind's Crimson Star PNG.png

It's right under Orion,

Ooops! I see you've already bagged this! Some days my fingers move faster than my head!   Ah well, someone else can use it. It's certainly a beauty from here!

Enjoy!

Dave

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Dave In Vermont

Dave In Vermont

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It's a red supergiant - according to the wiki on it. I don'tknow about other people, but these always look more orange to me, such as Betelgeuse. It seems everyone's perception of colour varies from person-to-person. Here the wiki on this star:

Mu Cephei - Herschel's Garnet Star.pdf

I love spectral colours -

Dave

 

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ronin

ronin

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I suspect that you need to track down a short list Carbon Stars. I thought I had one but not as a seperate list. Puzzled by that as I thought it was.

Will say carbon stars are dim, mainly as they are very cool and the carbon in them seems to absorb most wavelengths so you may find the opposite, they are red but unimpressive.

Off the locate that list of Red stars that I am very sure I created just it seems to be hiding and hiding very very well.

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rockystar

rockystar

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thanks guys, seems like was looking at the right star, and yes it was more like betelgeuse than hind's - which makes sense, as has been mentioned, It's a red super giant (like Betelgeuse), not a carbon star (like hind's).

@ronin I think I've got a list of carbon stars, probably from a list you've posted in the past :)  thanks.

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Dave In Vermont

Dave In Vermont

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Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't Procyon Centauri - with his newly found Earth-like planet - also a Carbon-Star? And it's Earth-like planet to be found (barely) in the 'Goldilocks' region of this star?

Ah ha! Here we are:

proxima-centauri-bright-ANNOTATED.jpg

 I thought so:

 

proxima-centauri-habitable-zone.jpg

 

There was one right next door! Shall we build a Starship and see if the residents make good sushi?

Cynically,

Dave

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PHIL53

PHIL53

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Suggest other interesting "red stars", not always very easy to find (unless you have a GoTo system, of course) but surely rewarding:

T Lyrae, WZ Cassiopea and U Cygni, all easily visible in this period (clouds permitting !!)

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ronin

ronin

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I may have posted a list of Carbon Stars but owing to how I have the document on my PC I doubt it. The document is a bit "wordy" as it appears more a collection of 3 lists and an explanation of carbon stars and is 7 pages long. Not what I would attach for SGL. Sort of thing which is more a case of "Has anyone a list of carbon stars and can they also explain what they are? " Good answer for a GCSE question type of document, not the "Here is a short list of Carbon Stars" type document.

I do recall discussing Red Stars with a friend one night doing some observing, about 2 or 3 years back or more now. He mentioned one and asking when it appeared. As I recall it is very low and best chance is Summer about July. Also setting up on Dover cliffs or The Lizard would help. My problem is I can never remember it's name. Think we made up a list at that time of red stars, likely about 5 of them. Arcturus, Betelguese, Aldebanan, Antares, +?. However although sure I did I have no record of it on the PC either in the expected folders or following a search.

It may, just may, be useful to check out The Astronomy League, they have observing programs and they may have a red star or carbon strs observing program.

 

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spaceman_spiff

spaceman_spiff

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What I done in the past is to defocus the telescope to show the colours of whatever stars are in the FoV. In fact I have a theory that the chromatic aberration from my scope actually helps distinguish different star colours when defocused! It makes a great effect when imaging, not sure what you will see through the eyepiece though.

Dan :happy7:

 Defocused_stars.jpg

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LukeSkywatcher

LukeSkywatcher

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34 minutes ago, spaceman_spiff said:

What I done in the past is to defocus the telescope to show the colours of whatever stars are in the FoV. In fact I have a theory that the chromatic aberration from my scope actually helps distinguish different star colours when defocused! It makes a great effect when imaging, not sure what you will see through the eyepiece though.

Dan :happy7:

 Defocused_stars.jpg

There is method in your madness. I have also found that a truer colour of stars shows up better when the scope is out of focus. No harm in doing so when purely observing and even in your image above it shows up well (even though the stars are out of focus and look more like planets. Thats fine with me as you are only making a valid point.

LOL.......i bet the serious die-hard astro-imagers are looking at your image with open mouths thinking "Good God what is he at".

As i said above, you are just proving a point that out of focus stars show their colour better.

P.S.~ i know most imagers can get their stars to be pinpoint sharp and show their true colours with a bit of post processing. As a non-imager myself........i like and understand your approach.

 

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Ruud

Ruud

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A bit off topic, but the Garnet star (mu Ceph), together with nu Ceph and α Cam, are among the most distant naked eye stars, way more distant than even Deneb!

These stars and their distances are on this map of the  Cepheus - Camelopardalis region.

The Garnet star shows its colour beautifully in binoculars. 

stellarium-000.png
Screenshot and info from Stellarium

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Ruud

Ruud

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3 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

That is interesting Ruud. I wonder where Stellarium gets its data from?

Wikipedia !

 :binkybaby:

Okay, probably not wikipedia. The distances to these very far-off stars seem to be mostly educated guesses, possibly based on spectral types, assumed absolute magnitudes and observed magnitudes.  Values vary from source to source.

Stellarium just gives very optimistically precise  estimates for values of which the uncertainties must be really high. That's just one of the reasons why I like Stellarium so much.

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Dave In Vermont

Dave In Vermont

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Considering Stellarium's constantly being added to & revised - I would say it's a good bet they aren't drawing numbers out of a hat.

You're quite right, Ruud, this is one of the reasons I love it as well!

Dave

I have no idea what bug crawled up SGL's programming to cause this duplicate!

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N3ptune

N3ptune

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The Astroleague Carbonstar list, 100 carbon stars challenge to search for and to sketch. I think that's really interesting, and at my present pace, they are going to deliver my certificate when I am 80 years old. :icon_biggrin: (It's GOTO not recommended to promote the effort of searching the sky)

Still, when I find a red gem, it's exciting, it's fun and it's worth trying.

https://www.astroleague.org/files/obsclubs/CarbonStar/CarbonStarList3.pdf

https://www.astroleague.org/content/carbon-star-observing-club

I also want to point out a discovery of mine, around the Garnet star, there are more orange/yellow stars has shown the map bellow. There is 1 in particular which had a deep rich yellow color, not the same hue has the garnet but it's a different gem. It's one of the stars inside the green circles bellow, Great place to wander around.

- NOTE: also @Dave In Vermont I see the beautiful Garnet star has warm yellow, almost orange but less orange then betelgeuse. Depending of the EP, Garnet is more orange with my Xcel LX EPs but more yellowish with my Orion Q70

(: great subject

mQyLhwA.png

 

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wxsatuser

wxsatuser

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On 11/11/2016 at 02:40, Dave In Vermont said:

It's a red supergiant - according to the wiki on it. I don'tknow about other people, but these always look more orange to me, such as Betelgeuse. It seems everyone's perception of colour varies from person-to-person. Here the wiki on this star:

Mu Cephei - Herschel's Garnet Star.pdf

I love spectral colours -

Dave

 

Depending on the elevation The Garnet Star should be orange leaning towards a slight yellowing at the highest elevations.
Like most stars it will look much redder below 20 degrees elevation.

Not sure at what elevation this data was taken at but would assume quite high, the Garnet is yellow/orange.
My colour balance might not be perfect and this data was from 7400feet asl in New Mexico.
Whenever I have looked at the Garnet in binos it appears a similar colour to me, we do have bad LP and that might make a difference?

IC13961.jpg


 

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