Hind's Crimson Star

[IB20]

I’ve finally bagged it. Three nights of trying and even tonight failing with the 15x bins. They prepared me well when I swapped over to the 76DCQ as I was I knew exactly where to look after pretty much memorising the star patterns in the area.

Wow, it’s very, very red but I’m not surprised I’ve struggled to find it, it’s really dim. Increasing the mag only made it dimmer and reduced colouration. I found 25mm @ ~38x was the optimum to both see the star well with diffraction rings and absolute ruby red colouration.

Feels like a real achievement bagging this observation. Now I know it can be done I will check up on it annually.

This little Tak never lets me down 😁.

[IB20]

Whilst in the area RX Leporis is a really nice coloured orange star, as is HD 33162. 

[orion25]

2 hours ago, IB20 said:

I’ve finally bagged it. Three nights of trying and even tonight failing with the 15x bins. They prepared me well when I swapped over to the 76DCQ as I was I knew exactly where to look after pretty much memorising the star patterns in the area.

Wow, it’s very, very red but I’m not surprised I’ve struggled to find it, it’s really dim. Increasing the mag only made it dimmer and reduced colouration. I found 25mm @ ~38x was the optimum to both see the star well with diffraction rings and absolute ruby red colouration.

Feels like a real achievement bagging this observation. Now I know it can be done I will check up on it annually.

This little Tak never lets me down 😁.

That's great! Congratulations! I surmised that it must be in its dimmest phase at this time. I usually can see it pretty easily since I know the area so well.

[Littleguy80]

Inspired to go out and observe Hind’s Crimson star this evening. An amazing shade of red. Grabbed a quick single frame with my DSLR just to show the colour. 

[MalcolmM]

On 13/01/2023 at 09:11, Nik271 said:

Decided to resurrect this thread as now is a great time to observe R Leporis.

I had a look at it on two nights this week, first time was with 20x80 binoculars and it was pretty hard to spot, next time it was with my 127 Mak and the deep red colour is very striking. You will need a clear southern sky as it never rises more than 25 degrees from the UK. In January it transits at the very civilised time 9-10pm and the best way to find it (for me) is by doing a star hop from Alpha to Mu Leporis and continuing 3/4 of their distance further. Currently the magnitude of R Lep is about 9.5, so it is hard to spot in binoculars but the crimson red comes out very well in a small telescope. I'm attaching a finder chart courtesy of AAVSO (the numbers next to the stars are their magnitudes up to first decimal place):

Thanks for the chart @Nik271. Saw this tonight with the help of your chart. Much fainter than I was expecting and quite startling with the traffic light red colour! Lovely!

Malcolm 

[Geoff Barnes]

Hind's Crimson Star is perfectly placed for me in the evening to observe, and I do recall seeing it a few years ago. I spent about an hour last night scouring the area of sky equidistant from Mintaka and Rigel in a straight line and do you think I could find it, nope not at all.

Very frustrating as I know where to look for it. I can only presume it is a lot dimmer than the last time I saw it. 

Will try again tonight, fingers crossed. 

[Nyctimene]

Spotted R Leporis under sub-average 4.9 NELM (UMi) skies, first with the new 16x70. Starting from Rigel, I found it after a short star hop to the S, using SkySafari, within a few minutes. As Nik271 describes, it's really dim in binoculars, but still to make out with direct vision, the colour appearing to me as a medium red (not quite traffic light red). The follow-up observation with the Heritage 130 P Flextube with mag of 108x showed the colour markedly better, especially after prolonged observing (mirroring Nik's experience). Have to repeat this during the next days with the 8" or 12". Always a pretty target!

Stephan

Edited February 22, 2023 by Nyctimene

[orion25]

On 22/01/2023 at 16:30, Littleguy80 said:

Inspired to go out and observe Hind’s Crimson star this evening. An amazing shade of red. Grabbed a quick single frame with my DSLR just to show the colour. 

Awesome!

[Nik271]

On 20/02/2023 at 21:34, Nyctimene said:

Spotted R Leporis under sub-average 4.9 NELM (UMi) skies, first with the new 16x70. Starting from Rigel, I found it after a short star hop to the S, using SkySafari, within a few minutes. As Nik271 describes, it's really dim in binoculars, but still to make out with direct vision, the colour appearing to me as a medium red (not quite traffic light red). The follow-up observation with the Heritage 130 P Flextube with mag of 108x showed the colour markedly better, especially after prolonged observing (mirroring Nik's experience). Have to repeat this during the next days with the 8" or 12". Always a pretty target!

Stephan

 Yes, it is still quite dim: mag 9.5 on average according to AAVSO. It should start to get brighter in the next couple of months but undortunately for us in the northern hemisphere it will disappear from the evening sky. Perhaps we can catch it when it is brighter in the pre-dawn sky  from October.

[Nyctimene]

Observed R Lep again two evenings ago, this time with the 12" f/5 Hofheim traveldob. Again, rather poor visibility ( NELM 4.8). The star was brighter and comfortably visible, but still for me somewhat "underwhelming", i.e. lacking the desired "reddishness". Contrasting to Nik271 above, I'm waiting for the star's minimum, to get that deep red (maybe next winter/spring, if I'm interpreting the AAVSO data correct). But the perception of red under conditions of darkness seems to be a rather complex phenomenon; there's the "Purkinje" effect, but also additional physiological factors. Found some interesting information about this (along with many links) here, esp. # 31:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/827251-what-are-reddest-stars-the-ones-with-the-highest-b-v-index/

Could be a nice project, to spot the brighter C stars at their minimum, using the 12" or 18".

Stephan

Edited February 23, 2023 by Nyctimene

[Nyctimene]

#9 of the linked CN article reminds me of this useful trick to spot the faint Crescent nebula NGC 6888, a summertime/autumn target:

You start the star hop at Sadr (Gamma Cygni) and move about 2° to the SW, exactly in the direction of Albireo (Beta Cygni). A star trapezium (6.3-8.0 stars) of roughly 30 arc min will come into view. It's western corner is formed by a pair of stars; the slightly fainter one is the variable Carbon star RS Cygni, that is really conspicuous and unmistakable with it's  orange-red colour (B-V: 2.98, according to SkySafari). Spotting it will confirm, that you are on the right track. The Crescent  with it's three embedded stars is just 20 arc min more to the SW (switch to a  UHC or O III filter). Two special targets in the same field of view!

Stephan

Edited February 23, 2023 by Nyctimene

[Geoff Barnes]

Success, at last! Gosh it took a while! With the help of SkySafari I was eventually able to zero in on the exact location just below a small parallelogram of stars. 

It is much dimmer than it was the last time I saw it and I think I must have gone past it several times without seeing it. 

Still a beautiful ruby red though as always, but just a tiny speck easily missed.

Happy now! 

[josefk]

Success for me as well tonight. A very dull copper colour -  brightening to a more polished copper at the lowest magnification i could use. Unfortunately low down in the murk in a direction that gets lit up by a nearby town when the atmosphere is as damp as it was tonight so at low magnification the sky was quite a light slate grey. Still happy to observe it though. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by josefk
spelling

[CraigT82]

On 19/02/2023 at 21:09, Geoff Barnes said:

Hind's Crimson Star is perfectly placed for me in the evening to observe, and I do recall seeing it a few years ago. I spent about an hour last night scouring the area of sky equidistant from Mintaka and Rigel in a straight line and do you think I could find it, nope not at all.

Very frustrating as I know where to look for it. I can only presume it is a lot dimmer than the last time I saw it. 

Will try again tonight, fingers crossed. 

I used the same starhopping technique (Mintaka > Rigel and repeat) last night and failed miserably.  Mind you all I could think about was how cold I was having hideously underdressed so that didn’t help. Will definitely try again, hopefully tonight. 

[Mr Spock]

I've not looked for it. It's too low now so it will have to be a target for next winter.