TheSkySearchers

Hello all, and welcome to the April 2021 edition of "Brett's Carbon Star Hunt". I hope everyone is easing into Spring (or Autumn) well, and I hope everyone is staying safe.

On to this months targets: (And yes, we are rapidly approaching Virgo and Ophiuchus season!)

SS Vir - Range 6.0 - 9.6: Data from the AAVSO can be found here. There are NO visual observations (at least that will load) for the last year in the AAVSO WebObs database. It crashes whenever I try to find any.

V Oph - Range: 7.3 - 11.6: Data can be found here, and observations can be found here. This is also a target that I have observed a couple of times in the past (both 7 (!!!) years ago). Fro my notes:

8/17/2014: Faint red bewtween two others in a 12-6 pattern. Carbon Star.

8/26/2014: Somber red star, "still" in a 12-6 pattern with 2 others. Was unsure with previous observation. While observing meteor streaked across FOV. Took a few minutes for the color to come out while observing.

RR Her - Range: 8.8 - 13.5 (a dimmer target!) - Data can be found here, and observations here.

I hope most people who are interested can get out and observe these stars - they are beautiful to look at.

Maybe with the weather picking up, I will be able to get out a little this month - it would be nice to check out the Virgo Cluster - something I have YET to observe!

Thanks Brett, spring is here, the skies might clear!

Regards

Graeme

I'm going to go LIVE with this tonight and see if I can capture them.

8:30pm MST (2:30 AM Sunday, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) I will post a link in the AP Live group email.

If you wish to join the event, you can sign up to be notified, here's how: viewtopic.php?f=86&t=17349

Gordon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:37 pm I'm going to go LIVE with this tonight and see if I can capture them.

8:30pm MST (2:30 AM Sunday, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) I will post a link in the AP Live group email.

If you wish to join the event, you can sign up to be notified, here's how: viewtopic.php?f=86&t=17349

I don't think I'll be able to join - but let me know how it goes!

Well that was fun!!!

First off I was joined by Greg (Astrobee) for the adventure. It's fun to have someone else along for the ride. I'm not a late night person anymore so we had to shut down at 10 pm MST. Unfortunately that excluded capturing V Oph for me.

I found SS-Vir to be a very difficult target. It's much smaller than I expected and had to do quite a bit of double checking my results on Astrometry.net. I confirmed it was exactly centered in the frame so my plate solving worked great!!!

Here's the image.

My second capture was RR her. This one appeared in the center of the frame and was easier to pick out.

This was a fun exercise! Plus I was able to confirm just how good platesolving works!!!

Thanks Brett!

That's really awesome Gordon - thanks for sharing.

I've heard of platesolving (obviously), but could not describe WHAT it is.

An interesting trio this month Brett.

I was running a Google Meet session whilst hunting for your April Carbon stars which pushed my multitasking skills to the limit!

I found SS Vir but it seemed much less bright than described. Stellarium has it as magnitude 12.2 and that's how it looked on my capturing screen and on my final image. I sent my image to Astrometry.net to confirm the co-ordinates which it did but didn't annotate any of the star designations in my image!

Here it is just above centre of image:


V Oph had not yet risen so I'll have to try that one next month.

RR Her was magnificent in the centre of the screen displaying true carbon colours. Unfortunately, my lack of data collected or poor processing skills have left the image a tad monochrome.


Thanks Brett

Regards

Graeme

Here is my contribution to the April Red Carbon star hunt.
SS Vir.
I took out my largest telescope, my 150 mm Achromat, because I had more deepsky fish to fry.
Visually quite obvious in a nice starfield. The old Skysensor 2000 doesn't know any carbon stars so I entered its coordinates.
RA 12h 26.3 m and Dec +00° 39'
SS Vir is the only readily visible red star in the field, although HD 108026 seems reddish in Sky Safari to.( In the image the brightest at the five o'clock point.) I didn't notice that visually though.

John,

You create great sketches!!!

Congratulations on the find!

John - that's great - you really captures the red - thanks for sharing it!