Chi Cygni

I wonder have any of you ever observed the variable star Chi (X) Cygni?? It's undergoing a remearkable maximum magnitude at the moment of about magnitude 3.8 or so. This star is a huge red giant located in the constellation Cygnus, and varies in magnitude similar to the famous red star Mira from usually magnitude 4.5 down to about 15 !! It's north of Albireo, beta cygni, and a little southwest of magnitude 4 eta cygni, a great signpost.

Right now it's really bright, much brighter than expected, so why don't you follow it over the next few weeks? And ....... watch it disappear from naked eye view when it falls back again.

Some charts here:
www.aavso.org/cgi-bin/shrinkwrap.pl?path...CHI_CYG/CHICYG-A.GIF

www.aavso.org/cgi-bin/shrinkwrap.pl?path...CHI_CYG/CHICYG-B.GIF

Go Look!
Keith..

Keith - do you know what the period is?

Cheers

Dave

Hi Dave, The period is 408 days, so just over a year, if you look at the 'backbone' of cygnus right now, you might notice that it does'nt look the same, there's an extra star there, near eta, between gamma and beta, like a new nova, but this one we know about.

It should fade quite quickly from naked eye over the next few weeks.
Looka agin in september and it will be gone !
Keith..

Sorry Keith - one more question... What's the magnitude range from max to min?

Cheers

Dave

You can see from the charts that it's usual cycle is between 4.3 and 14.1 visual, historically it was seen at 3.3 many years ago, but this is close so it's worth a look.

Here is the latest observations fro aavso...

www.aavso.org/cgi-bin/newql.pl?name=chi%20cyg&output=html

Keith..

Thanks for the info Keith - will check it out!!