Variable Star Observing In City: Introduction

Variable star observing is known to be one of the most accessible ways of contributing to science for an amateur astronomer. When I first learnt variable star observing, it seemed attractive but I scared to “ruin” collected scientific data by my “incorrect” brightness estimates. Therefore, I decided not to do variable star observing and concentrated only on leisure activities like deep sky or planetary observation. In 2009, I encountered an article in Sky and Telescope magazine about Epsilon Auriage and then heard 10 star program. They changed my opinion about variable star observing.

10 star program is a variable star observation program about 10 bright variable stars. They are all naked eye stars but in city most of them may require binoculars especially at minimum brightness. The tutorial is aimed to train the novice variable star observers through 10 easy to find and observe variable stars with particular emphasis on Epsilon Aurigae. It briefly explains how to estimate brightness of stars and how to use variable star charts.

If 10 stars do not seem enough to you (like me), you can continue with AAVSO Visual Observing Manual and vast information in AAVSO website. “Observers” section in AAVSO website provides links to the list of stars easy to observe, 10 star tutorial, WebObs (online observation entry page), VSP (chart generation tool), recent observations of stars and observing sections’ pages. After making your observations, you need to record them. The easiest way is using WebObs through its basic interface; however, before that you need to get observer initials from “Observers” page. Observer initial is the unique code of an observer and your observations are tagged with your initials. After getting your initials, username and password, you are ready to log your observation.
In the next post, we will explore variable star observing in city with binoculars.