SZ Herculis - July 2, 2007
SZ Herculis is the flashing star near the upper left center of this two frame animated gif. SZ Herculis is a fast eclipsing binary star in the constellation Hercules. This variable star goes from magnitude 10.5 down to about magnitude 12 and back to 10.5 in about 3.5 hours! Each exposure shown here was 20 seconds long. I selected two images out of the approximately 100 I shot. The first frame was taken near minimum light at 11:30 pm and the second frame was taken near maximum light at 12:54 am. I got the idea for this animation from the article in the July 2007 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine.
These shots were taken from my front yard in Cary, NC. Unlike most July evenings, the temperature was nice and the humidity was low. Passing clouds caused interruptions in my planned sequence of photos. I imaged with the Genesis and the ST-402ME and guided with the Stellarvue and the ST-4. Both were mounted side by side on the Losmandy G-11.
This is the light curve generated by MaximDL with the data from the 63 good images, ie no clouds. Also shown are three reference stars in the field.
THere is the AAVSO finder chart showing the variable as well as three of reference stars I used. I did not use the 11.2 magnitude star to the East of SZ Her.
Back to the top of the pageBack to Mark's Astrophotography Home