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.
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.
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!
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