Variable Star Observing

Contacts:

John Moore:
Steve Woodbridge:

Variable Star Observing Campaign 2008 / 2009

Following the recent Variable Star Workshop, and the interest some of the members have shown, Steve Woodbridge has posted a version of one of the charts used in that meeting, plus a couple of other charts to form a part of an observing campaign for this autumn and early winter. Results will be posted on the website.

A Variable Star Observing Campaign update is available here.

VW Cephei revisited by John Moore (11 Dec 2008)

The following series was recorded between 2008 Dec 09 18:30hrs and Dec 10 02:30hrs UT Equipment: Pentax 105SDHF telescope with SBIG ST10XME CCD camera Filter: V band. 914 exposures were taken of of 8 seconds and calibrated with 150 darks, flats, biases and flat-darks. A first order low pass filter to was applied to the results. Raw standard deviation of check star was 0.017746 magnitude after rejection of 14 points because of excursions caused by clouds. 

Photometry of a Variable Star by John Moore (24 Aug 2008)

I set up on VW Cep (Cephus), an eclipsing binary, but was clouded out after about 40 minutes. Last night I set up again and left the system running all night. Unfortunately I found this morning that cloud had again intervened just after midnight, but this time I got 2.5 hours of data. As the period is about 7 hours this wasn’t too much use, but enough to get part of the light curve including the eclipse. See below. This was with the 105mm Pentax and SBIG ST10 camera self guided on a bright star. I reckon this is half a result. I’ve searched the net including the BAA and AAVSO sites for a chart or other data on this object but found surprisingly little. I must have another go and try to get the full curve.

Observation Reports by Steve Woodbridge