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I’ve started work on the “real time photometric alert script”, I hope I can outrun T CrB … My plan is to have this run on a Raspberry Pi, using siril-cli (for stacking (say) 4 x 10 sec exposures (green channel), Source-extractor (for creating a catalog of detected stars and instrumental photometry), scamp for doing the astrometric solution and some custom scripts to check the photometric results for consistency and generate the actual trigger. We will see…
I’ve started work on the “real time photometric alert script”, I hope I can outrun T CrB … My plan is to have this run on a Raspberry Pi, using siril-cli (for stacking (say) 4 x 10 sec exposures (green channel), Source-extractor (for creating a catalog of detected stars and instrumental photometry), scamp for doing the astrometric solution and some custom scripts to check the photometric results for consistency and generate the actual trigger. We will see…
This is an interesting project, Heinz-Bernd. Keep us posted and if it works out perhaps you can write it up for the VSS Circular.
Good luck!I’m not familiar with the S30, but as long as the thing also creates a network share “//Seestar/” in your local network (to pickup frames on the fly), whatever I come up with should be useable for the S30 as well.
I think I’m halfway done now. I’ll be using siril_cli for stacking, astap-cli for plate-solving and first-look photometry and topcat/stilts to generate some checkplots.
While I’m testing this solution (we might have some clear nights over here in the next few days…), the script will upload checkplots generated live to
http://bikeman.selfhost.eu/astro/T_CrB-latest.png
Cloud monitor to go with this: http://bikeman.selfhost.eu/astro/allsky-latest.jpg
but as long as the plots title mentions “TESTING” after the creation-date, you obviously should not trust the results. I think the plots are obvious, they list the measured magnitude for T CrB in the center plus the catalog(blue) and measured(black) magnitudes for up to three comparison stars, for sanity checking. If you see less than 4 red blobs (identified stars for the photometric analysis), the results are inherently wonky.
Actually the hardest part is to come up with good quality checks that should prevent that the script triggers an alarm (which would result in some loud alarm sound and my bedroom lights being switched on) just by some cloud passing the field or some such (like: at leats 2 comp stars have to be matched with “reasonable” magnitude and T CrB is either detected as brightened or not included in the photometry output (which I guess could happen if it saturates).
Of course the idea is that several people all over the planet would do this, so combined we would have a real good chance to catch T CrB very early in the erruption.
Stay tuned
CS
HBEHi all,
This popped up on my news feed:
Which seemed to have a somewhat accurate prediction of eruption of TCrB on Thursday 27th March. I thought it was bit sensationalist/click baity but they did link to a paper (of which I haven’t reviewed in detail):
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad8bba/ampdf
But in the abstract it is stated:
It is predicted that the next eruption should
appear around 27 March or 10 November 2025, or later.Which is hedging ones bets I think! Although the article has taken “around 27 March” to mean “on 27 March”.
I suppose some exposure to the general public is good, even if it is setting people up for disappointment?
Dave
Yes this prediction in the Schneider paper was discussed a few posts above (3 March), Dave.
As I said then, I can see no real astrophysical basis for this.The rest of the article is not bad at all. Thanks for sharing it.
The link to Forbes does not work for me. I found it here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2025/03/20/a-star-may-explode-next-week-in-once-in-80-years-event—what-to-know/
Edit: this link does not work either. The real link, bizarrely and unhelpfully, contains three hyphens in a row which seem to get corrupted into a single long line.
Thanks Jeremy,
I should have looked further back in this thread!
Glad it was interesting enough though. I hope you are ready on Thursday 🙂
Dave
….and now the BBC has picked it up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cjw2j8e1476o
Yes it’s a strange claim, Michael. And made with such certainty. Perhaps an example of false precision…
Mind you, if it does hold off until just after midnight tonight, it will be a nice birthday present for me 🙂It’s clear here in Germany 🙂 if you are bored you can watch my live T CrB photometry feed : http://bikeman.selfhost.eu/astro/T_CrB-latest.png
Seriously, I’m not expecting anything to happen this night more than any other night in 2025/2026 wrt T CrB and the measurements tonight might get interrupted from time to time when I try to tweak and test things.
I wonder if T CrB will go into history as the variable star equivalent of comet C/1973 E1 (Kohoutek)?
Some good news from publicity. ZWO have added it to Seestar’s catalog.
Attachments:
I see at least Space.com put a question mark at the end of their headline and quoted Jeremy’s scepticism (Also the lack of any evidence in the RV data to support the presence of a suggested third body to trigger the outburst on certain dates.)
https://www.space.com/the-universe/stars/hold-onto-your-hats-is-the-blaze-star-t-corona-borealis-about-to-go-boomCertainly not present in my meteor cam capture at 02:39 this morning.
Callum
Attachments:
I see at least Space.com put a question mark at the end of their headline and quoted Jeremy’s scepticism (Also the lack of any evidence in the RV data to support the presence of a suggested third body to trigger the outburst on certain dates.)
https://www.space.com/the-universe/stars/hold-onto-your-hats-is-the-blaze-star-t-corona-borealis-about-to-go-boomIt’s nice to see some balanced reporting. And to be quoted correctly 🙂
Not so sure about the third body, though!
Interesting graphics from NASA in this article. The accretion disc appears to be around the wrong star, with the erupting T CrB occuring in the outer regions of the disc. Wow!
The Mark Garlick cartoon at the top looks good though – as one might expect from him.
Gray
Interesting graphics from NASA in this article. The accretion disc appears to be around the wrong star, with the erupting T CrB occuring in the outer regions of the disc. Wow!
I did a reverse image search and tracked it back to where it was repurposed from in 2010
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20184
not that it makes it any better but at least we now know who was to blame !They actually do also have a decent animation linked from that page showing the accreting system but not the outburst
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20393/EDIT the explosion is shown in a further animations down the page
A preprint on ArXiv today on the “Red giant component of the recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis” concludes the mag of the red giant is V = 10.17 +/- 0.06
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