Wed, 02/27/2013 - 03:14
Two weeks ago I was at the monthly meeting of the Amature Telescope Makers of Boston at MIT in Cambridge. The speaker of the night was from the AAVSO (Arnie Perhaps?) Anyhow, as a novice I was intrigued by the whole presentation on variable stars and amazed I could follow most of it. There was one thing however in the presentation that I thought was really intriguing- it was an animated .gif of a star cluster (m92 perhaps?) that showed the animation of the variable stars in the cluster- I was hoping to see it again, and if possible share it with friends if it were available, anyone know where I might find it?
Thanks in advance
Hi, Drix,
Maybe it was one of these:
http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~jhartman/M3_movies.html
These are movies of the RR Lyraes in the globular cluster M3.
I always remember the first one because in the 99th Meeting here in Argentina both Arne and I chose the same animation for our presentations and we didn't know until we saw them! ;)
These stars have periods close to 0.5 d. so you can make a nice animation if you follow them all night long. The good thing is that they go from maximum to minimum (the maximum variation, called the range) in just ~10% of their period or more or less 0.05 d or 1h 20 m. so if you take some pictures around that time you'll be able to see them vary strongly and rapidly.
Cheers,
Sebastian
I would also like to say that if you share the animation, be sure that you pass along the credit/acknowledgement too. Kris and Andrew worked to create this animation that is used in many presentations, including mine. There is another similar animation for M101, I believe, that highlights the long-period variables.
Arne