Posted by Gary Poyner at 10:58 on 2011 Jul 08
Hi Paul,One easy question and one difficult. Easy first…V Sge is well placed for observation at the moment, and is a perfect star to begin VS observing with. It’s a Nova Like star which also displays eclipses. It’s ALWAYS active, and you can observe two or three times a week and you will see some variation. It’s range is 8.6-13.9 but it’s rare it gets brighter than mag 9 or fainter than 13.0 – perfect for your telescope. I have a 20 year light curve on my web pages if you want to take a look.We don’t have a BAA chart for it, but you can get one from the AAVSO. Their chart plotter is easy to use, but if you haven’t done it before it can take a bit of practice to get the best chart for you. With this in mind I have created a 30 arc minute chart with the correct orientation for a Newtonian from the AAVSO chart plotter, and uploaded it to my web page. This will be easier for you and save you messing around. We want to get you observing this star asap :-)http://www.garypoyner.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/VSge_chart.gifIt’s impossible to answer your second question here – too involved. We do have literature on this subject in the VSS, so if you contact the Director Roger Pickard, he will send you the details. It’s one of those things which looks very difficult when written down, but actually quite easy to do. You might want to have a look at this brief introduction I put together years ago when I was Director of the VSS (updated in 2009)…http://www.garypoyner.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/intro.htmlWe have a VSS meeting in Salford in October (details to be announced in due course), and we’d love to see you there. Bring all your mates too :-)If you want more information on VS observing, you can contact me directly. Details on the BAAVSS web pages. Cheers,Gary