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I had a short break in clouds last night – 31st (before torrential rain and storms), and made a visual estimate of 10.2 with a 22cm. Might not be my best estimate, as struggling with Covid – and feeling pretty sorry for myself.
Gary
Thank you both Mike and Ian.
That’s an interesting time series Ian. Quite an amplitude of variation during that rapid fade. Don’t have much to compare it with though, so we’ll have to see what happens. The duration of the outburst points to a normal one, but as I mentioned above, this might be a precursor – so if you can, please keep your (digital) eye on it during the next week if possible.
Lovely day here yesterday, but low cloud came over as darkness fell, so only a CCD measure from me…
July 30.0861 16.522C (Slooh 2)
Cheers,
GaryMike,
It was fainter this morning – visual 13.7 on July 29.076. The Slooh image this morning measured at 14.012C on July 29.1063
Here is a cropped gif from the Slooh image you requested.
The quick fade probably suggests a normal outburst, but it might also be a precursor to a superoutburst. UV Per did this many years ago and caught everyone on the hop.
Gary
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Steve,
You’ll probably find Jeremy Shears article in VSS Circular 200 of interest, as it contains this snippet from the Times and a whole lot more…
https://britastro.org/vss/VSSC200.pdf#page=8
Gary
Very sad news indeed.
He gave a wonderful talk at the Winchester weekend many years ago (Alfred Curtis lecture) when it was held at King Alfreds college. As a modest collector of star atlases, I was enthralled.
Gary
I measured it at the same magnitude 16.738C one minute after you Stewart (mine was the next job after you in the queue).
Gary
I’ve been following this visually and remotely for a while now.
Image below is from last night (June 24.95 UT), and is a truncated image taken with SLOOH Canary 2 Ultra Wide field 85mm Teleview riding on the main telescope.
Unfiltered magnitude 9.4CV using the BAA T CrB sequence.
Gary
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Well done Lars. I wondered if anyone would have a try.
Clear here until dusk, then cloud rolled in just as I was about to open observatory. Typical!
Gary
Cloudy here this evening, but looks like SS Cyg is at mag 10.1V according to latest from AAVSO – so in outburst!
Gary
Well it was certainly a little brighter this morning visually, so the next 24-48 hrs will tell. It’s approached magnitude 11.0 a few times since the April outburst and returned to it’s normal state, so it’s anybodys guess what will happen next.
Gary
North Birmingham treated to a fantastic auroral display this evening.
Photo is a 3 second hand held with iPhone.
Gary
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I have a weather Owl. It’s been mentioned on this forum before, so I won’t post a photo of it again. It remains more successful than the BBC/Met office forecasts.
Gary
Hi Peter,
I don’t have a dedicated meter, but I do have an iPhone app called Dark Sky Meter. Not sure how accurate it is, but the odd time I do take a reading, the results are between 18.8 and 19.2. I take them fairly infrequently, because to be honest I get depressed when I see the result.
I was hoping that one of the good things to come out of the Birmingham City Council debacle would be the dimming of street lights after midnight. It’s been rumoured that it might happen, but knowing the incompetence of all involved, they are probably still looking for the switch! I’m still waiting for that to happen.
Gary
Alan,
I guess as a purely visual observer, I get to use more nights than you do as an imager – but this year has certainly been a disappointment so far.
My weather records for 2024 show that I’ve observed with my 51cm on 28 nights this year (including last night-this morning), with only three of those nights being dusk-dawn. The rest have been clearings and holes. This time last year (May 5) the number was 39 with 11 dusk-dawn nights.
If the weather eroded my enthusiasm for astronomy, then I would have given up a long time ago. It’s hard being an amateur astronomer in this country, and it always has been. So no change there! For me the biggest threat to my enthusiasm is the brightness of the backgound sky, which has deteriorated greatly over the past few years. OK, I live in north Birmingham, and the skies have never been dark, but the introduction of LED lighting has pretty much killed off my fainter then mag 16 detections, whilst the the majority of the time sees me struggling to get to 15.5. As an observer of many faint CV’s, this is the demoralising aspect for me. I won’t give up though. Over the past few years I’ve slowly been altering my observing programme to compensate for the degrading sky quality.
If it comes to a choice between cloudy weather and sky quality, I’ll take the former every time!
I hope your skies start to improve.
Gary
I too am a little mystified by the photometry in the AAVSO database. I went back to the image after I saw it, and double checked I had ID’d the correct star – which I had.
I used the normal wide field image from the Slooh Chile 2 scope for both measures. The ‘Y’ is the AAVSO code for active. The image was measured with AIP4WIN.
Gary
Stewart,
I have two predictions…
MOMO (Multiwavelength Observations and Modelling of OJ287) 2026-2028
Mauri Valtonen – May 30, 2031
Disappointment looms for somebody!
Gary
Winchester weekends have never been streamed live or recorded in the past, so it’s unlikely you’ll get to experience this if you don’t attend – if it ever happens of course! Just maybe though, someone might record it on their phone and post here.
Gary
