Agol, Interesting objects in Perseus.

[Integral]

Great pointers Dave, that will be easy to find. Perseus is not that hard to see. It is one of the circumpolar constellations, so is pretty much always in the sky, northern hemisphere of course.

Has anyone observed a blink of Algol? That is one of those things that I have always wanted to see, but have just never planned a time for it.

For those not familiar with it, Algol is an eclipsing binary star system, One of the pair of stars is much dimmer. Every 3 days (approximately) the dimmer star passes in front causing the star to appear noticeably dimmer for short period. The ancient Greeks observed this change in brightness and saw it as the blinking eye in the decapitated of head Medusa.

 

[DaveC426913]

Has anyone observed a blink of Algol? That is one of those things that I have always wanted to see, but have just never planned a time for it.

For those not familiar with it, Algol is an eclipsing binary star system, One of the pair of stars is much dimmer. Every 3 days (approximately) the dimmer star passes in front causing the star to appear noticeably dimmer for short period. The ancient Greeks observed this change in brightness and saw it as the blinking eye in the decapitated of head Medusa.

I did not know that.

 

[Integral]

I should have linked http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/algol.html" in my previous post.

 

[DaveC426913]

Wow. I was wondering how long the transition took. It takes a mere hour to dim and another hour to brighten again. That's within the attention span of a backyard astronomer.

Do you know if there is a time chart that tells when to look?

 

[Integral]

Wow. I was wondering how long the transition took. It takes a mere hour to dim and another hour to brighten again. That's within the attention span of a backyard astronomer.

Do you know if there is a time chart that tells when to look?

I believe that there is a table in the Astromony Field Book, which due to a recent round of disorganization, I cannot lay my hands on my copy. There should be something online. I have made a quick Google search, but not spent anytime at it. I will keep looking.

 

[Integral]

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/variablestars/3304096.html?page=1&c=y" a caclulator. There is one one on the 22Nov that looks like a good time for me.


These Algol post are sort of Off topic. I am going to split them into a new thread.