A Few Observing Tips

The best tactic is to familiarize yourself with these stars and get in the habit of routinely checking up on them every clear night. Be prepared to maintain this vigil for many months to come. You might well be the first person to discover what makes one of these "unsolved variables" tick.

The techniques for making visual magnitude estimates are not very demanding. (For more detailed information, see "The Lure of Variable Stars.") Since the stars on the list (on the next page) are 8th to 10th magnitude, a 3- or 4-inch telescope is perfect for studying them. The larger the telescope the smaller the field of view, so you probably wouldn't want to use a big Dobsonian reflector on any of these stars. Visual-magnitude estimates are most reliable when the variable and comparison stars can be seen in the same field.

Try to select comparison stars that bracket the variable star in brightness and have a similar color. The colors on our charts can serve as a guide, for they, like the magnitudes of the comparison stars, are derived from the Tycho photometry of the Hipparcos mission. The colors are more vivid than those you will see at night. As is customary, these charts give comparison-star magnitudes to the nearest tenth with the decimal point omitted. A star labeled "83" is magnitude 8.3 visually, for example.