Above the Cloud - the blog!

A very cold night! It snowed yesterday and the temperature has been that low that it's now freezing! We are promised more snow tonight and tomorrow...we'll see! Stars can be seen but when some thin cloud moves over them, they are lost to view. Tonight Chi appears to be brighter than last night, but not quite rivalling the brightness of 17 Cygni, a magnitude +5.0 comparison star. To the east of Chi is another comparison star, +5.5 Hip 98325. Using 10x50 binoculars I can see a reddish hue about Chi and its brightness is 70% closer to 17 Cygni from Hip 98325 so giving me a visual magnitude estimate of +5.2. The above CCD image taken by Brian Joynes at Doncaster Astronomical Society was imaged on 12th of this month when Chi was estimated to be visual magnitude +5.8.

Thursday 17th: Yesterday early evening the skies cleared after the snow and I stepped outside to brave the cold and check on the current brightness of this red variable. With some cloud passing through from the east notwithstanding, I managed to get some good views of the star and it's surrounding comparison stars. After careful consideration, I have deduced that it is +5.4.

Sunday 6th: From my garden, the sky is very dark and clear. The Moon is well over to the east and there is a slight breeze but much milder than last week. It's early evening and plenty of stars can be seen; Cygnus is the target and it's essential to view Chi before it gets too low. Using 10x50 binoculars bring many more fainter stars into view and sweeping through the star-fields of the Milky Way up the length of Cygnus is amazing! Chi appears to be much brighter than when last viewd on the 30th November. To me it is brighter than the +5.9 comparisson star but still much dimmer than (about 60%) the bright +5.1 mag star to the west. So I have confidence in making my visual magnitude estimate of Chi as +5.7. It now looks orange in colour through the binoculars. Set my 8" SCT up with a view to spending a few hours in the garden looking at Doubles. Unfortunately the azimuth drive is overshooting targets wildly. I seem to have little control as the backlash has got worse to the...

Tuesday 1st December: Very cold tonight and very clear...too clear as the Moon, just 1 day away from being Full is dominating the sky. I drove to Austerfield expecting a throng there at the Observatory, silly me, should've rung before leaving home! This didn't really matter as I needed to get away from the bright lights of my neighbourhood to make an observation of Chi Cygni. Using my 10x50 binoculars and comparing the variable to three nearby comparison stars, a 6.4, 6.1 and magnitude 5.1 star, Chi certainly seemed brighter than when last viewed. In fact the variable is a 'tad' brighter than the +6.1 star, but not by much. So my estimate would be +6.0. After that, I did give Brian a call on my mobile. It was 9pm and Brian would be down for 10pm. So I nipped home for a hot cuppa of tea. Getting back at 10:30pm, Brian was waiting in the office and reluctant to go out in the cold especially with such a bright Moon in the sky. So I had the Dome to myself for a while. ...