Messing around with Mira's

[lunator]

I am usually a double star enthusiast but I have been following R Virginis a mira type variable.

This has led me down a rabbit hole 😀.

I thought I would compare R Vir to other Mira stars and this then morphed into reading up about the Mira period luminosity relationship. There is quite a lot of papers but one thing I could not find was the relationship between peak luminosity and period. 

I used the GAIA parallax/Colour. and the AAVSO on 93 Mira type stars to compare. There were a couple a curious things to note. Ther seem to be a couple of red dwarfs in the mix ( or the parallax is wrong...), and there is a clear relationship between peak absolute magnitude and period, and a less clear relationship between colour and luminosity. 

I have not calculated extinction or metallicity that will be next. 

Cheers Ian

 

Mira period_L.docx