{"id":474,"date":"2015-02-24T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:4545\/guide-to-r-scuti\/"},"modified":"2018-01-15T12:14:07","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T12:14:07","slug":"guide-to-r-scuti","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.popastro.com\/variablestar\/reference\/guides\/guide-to-r-scuti\/","title":{"rendered":"Guide to R Scuti"},"content":{"rendered":"

R Scuti, located a degree north west of the Wild Duck cluster (Messier 11), is a variable star that can be relied on to produce a good amount of brightness changes, although attempts to predict the timing and depth of the next minimum often fail!<\/p>\n

\"r<\/p>\n

As can be seen from the above light curve, the amplitude observed changes from year to year.<\/p>\n

It is usually described as showing alternate deep and shallow minima, but sometimes decides to do something different!\u00a0 In 2014, for example, it produced consecutive deep minima.<\/p>\n

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R Scuti is a yellow-orange supergiant star. The brightness changes are due to pulsations in the star’s outer layers. The depth of the deep minima seems to vary from year to year – in some years they drop below mag 8.0 ; in others they don’t even reach mag 7.0. There may even by a long term periodicity (about 30 years?) regarding this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Extreme brightness range<\/td>\n4.5- 8.6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
More typical range<\/td>\n5.0 – 7.5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Period of variation<\/td>\n142 days (often including one deep and one shallow minimum)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Frequency of observation<\/td>\nWorth checking a couple of times per week – possibly every other day during deep minima<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Observe using<\/td>\n40mm or 50mm binoculars will suffice for most of the time, but 50-80mm binoculars may be required during the deeper minima<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Visibility<\/td>\nCan be observed from mid January to mid December, but is rather low in the morning sky until April<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Here are two finder chart that show the location of R Scuti. Both have north at the top.<\/p>\n

The first shows its general location (Altair is a good starting point when using binoculars to locate R Scuti).<\/p>\n

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Wide field finder chart for R Scuti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can follow the brightness changes of R Scuti by comparing it with the lettered comparison stars on this second chart (which is approx 7 degrees by 4 degrees). At maximum, R Scuti will be easily the brightest of the stars in the small trapezium that also contains stars F, G and H. In deeper minima it can become fainter than comparison K.<\/p>\n

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Binocular chart for R Scuti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guide to the variable star R Scuti<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":81,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-variable-stars"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t