Waiting for T CrB aka the Blaze star

[MalcolmP]

The News:

today there is no news,
again !
It remains stubbornly at about m10.5 +/- , see in pic below two comparison magnitudes taken from the   BAA chart. 

But there is a little anecdote - After much rain and cloud during yesterday evening the forecast for midnight and later was promising.
Lo! just before midnight I could see, through patchy cloud and thin haze, Vega high above and Arcturus in the west just about to descend into some trees. Not much else could be seen but ever hopeful I began setting up tripod and camera. When I next glanced up, a few more stars could be seen and about where CrB should be, to the left of Arcturus I could see two stars.
Wot ! Heart nearly stops, cloud tries to ruin things, and a moment later a star moves out of the cloud and continues to climb slowly towards the zenith !

 edit later : DSLR static (not tracked)  on a tripod,
Canon 60d +135mm lens @f2.8
400x2sec subs stacked in DSS + pp in Gimp
(10x 2sec is ok to show TCrB in the noise but, 400 makes it nicer !)
 

 

Edited July 13 by MalcolmP

[Ratlet]

I feel silly asking this, but is it literally just a case of compare the brightness of it to the brightness of a star with static brightness to determine it's magnitude?

Also, that's an interesting double just to the left.  Wonder if it is visible visually.

[JeremyS]

47 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

I feel silly asking this, but is it literally just a case of compare the brightness of it to the brightness of a star with static brightness to determine it's magnitude?

Also, that's an interesting double just to the left.  Wonder if it is visible visually.

For visual observing, Yes that’s pretty much it. One technique is to find a comparison star slightly brighter and another slightly fainter, then estimate how far T is between.

For images, you need photometry software to extract the photometry.

Edited July 13 by JeremyS

[MalcolmP]

Forgot to include details of the pic. :-
DSLR static (not tracked)  on a tripod,
Canon 60d +135mm lens @f2.8
400x2sec subs stacked in DSS + pp in Gimp
(10x 2sec is ok to show TCrB in the noise but, 400 makes it nicer !)
 

[MalcolmP]

50 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

 that's an interesting double just to the left.  Wonder if it is visible visually.

Using angle measure in Stellarium they are 40.5" apart, un-named m10.55 & m10.85
Using ASTAP to interrogate Simbad gives BD cat numbers for them @ m10.6 & m10.9 :-->

 

 

[MalcolmP]

and we have another clear sky, , , with no news !

Hot off the camera just now, a single 2sec sub @ 11pmBST, fetched out of the noise by the clever ASTAP , shows it still at m10 or less

 

 

Edited July 13 by MalcolmP

[Geoff Lister]

Hot off the Dwarf 2 - again no news

Geoff