[AZ-Observing] odd sighting
- From: "djwrigley@xxxxxxxx" <djwrigley@xxxxxxxx>
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2015 06:24:57 GMT
Hi gang! I don't address this forum very often, but I saw something a bit
unusual tonight and I was hoping someone could shed a little light on it.About
an hour ago I happened to be outside looking in the direction of Leo and
Jupiter when an unexpectedly bright star caught my eye in Hydra. It was near
the position where you would normally expect to see Alphard, but it seemed
brighter than I remembered and there was another somewhat dimmer star only a
few degrees away. In fact, I wasn't sure at first which star was Alphard, but
I was pretty sure that there was only one reasonably bright star in that area.
I watched them both for several minutes, expecting to see some motion in one of
them (thinking one of them must be a satellite), but they remained in the same
position. I then decided to go in and check my computer's planetarium program
to see what the two stars were and found that the brighter of the stars was in
the position where iota Hydrae was supposed to be and the dimmer of the two was
definitely Alphard. When I went back outside the brighter star was no longer
visible (with the naked eye) and Alphard was shining at its usual brightness.
I know that there are some suspected variable stars in that area (one of them
is very near iota), but I have never heard of a variable star dimming so
quickly. Could a star flare up and dim that suddenly, or is there a better
explanation? I'm not ready to plead insanity yet. Don
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