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Preston Pendergraft
March 18th, 2013, 04:09 PM
Hey Everyone!

I was out this past Saturday observing, working on the carbon star list from Astronomical League and came across this star as part of the list. It is a carbon star, variable and is in a pretty crowded field (I was using 22 Pan in my 10in SCT).

However all descriptions I have found for this star say it is really faint, has no color and there is a orange field star that can be mistaken for it.

Last Saturday, I found the orange imposter star quite easily. However finding S Aurigae was very tough, I was about to give up when I saw a little, faint star that was blood red. I was excited and did a sketch and logged the star and moved on. I made a note to look up this star when I got home and see what other observers have seen.

That was when I found one entry on CN of an observer seeing a very faint colorless star. I am seeing a blood red color and it is probably one of darkest red stars I have seen doing this list.

This star varies from around 8 at brightest to around 13.5 at faintest. If I had to guess it is around 12th mag. Also my conditions are rural skies (not super dark) and a several day old Moon was up.

The CSOG guide helped immensely in locating this star, however the pic shows the star near it's brightest, as does wikisky.

Anyway I know most folks like the faint fuzzies, but if you have a largish scope this little carbon star is worth hunting down right now in my opinion, esp if the color is variable based on how bright it is. I found fainter carbon stars tend to be more red.

S Aurigae
RA 05 27 07
Dec + 34 08 59

lamperti
March 18th, 2013, 07:12 PM
Preston,
I saw this 2 years ago with a 20" f5 at 195x. It was dim then but had a reddish color. Those Carbon stars vary in their red color depending on where they are in their periodic fluctuation.

Al

Preston Pendergraft
March 20th, 2013, 03:22 PM
Hi Al

Glad you have observed this one. I made a note to revisit this one in the fall to see if it gets any brighter.

Clear Skies
March 27th, 2013, 03:03 PM
Two observations for this CS in my database, one for 10 March 2007 using an 8" SCT, the other more recently this March 4th using a 12" SCT. In 2007 the star appeared more red to me, at approximately mag. 10. This year it showed a vague orange hue that was evident only when comparing it to field stars.

Great to hear you like the CSOG guides! And nice to read a carbon star observation. Perhaps not truly deepsky, but very rewarding and lots of fun to observe!