BL Lac bright

[Gary Poyner]

Any AGN people out there might be interested to know that BL Lac has risen by a magnitude and a half in a week, and this morning was at mag 13.0 visual – the brightest I have personally seen it since November 1999.   These objects change brightness dramatically, so it could be either much brighter or much fainter tonight.

Finder chart on the BAAVSS web page https://britastro.org/vss/xchartcat/bl-lac-242.html

Gary

[Tim Haymes]

Gary, I was using the BL Lac field to test some video cameras on Aug 6th. I noticed BL was quite “obvious” but not being a strict VS observer the significance passed me by.  Yes i estimate mag 13. Here is a frame taken from the video: 
Pls note, there are hot pixels in the image which is uncorrected.   The frame limit is about 15.5

[Gary Poyner]

Nice coincidence that Tim.  Many thanks for posting the image!   Seems to have levelled out in brightness, but that could easily change.

Gary

[Tim Haymes]

The eagle eyed will notice the time stamp in the upper left of the image.  This is because the camera was QHY174m-GPS (12/16bit) operated in SharpCap 3,2.   and is not the WATEC 910HX  video camera which the label indicates.  I thought i should correct any confusion this might cause.

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