This thread will be used for PEP group announcements. Stay tuned!
Tom
Perseus Red/Blue calibration pair
The Perseus Red star is, in fact, a variable. The rate of change is supposed to be slow, so the pair can still be used for second-order extinction calibration. If the rate is really slow it might be possible to establish calibration magnitudes on an annual basis, but that remains to be seen.
Tom
What pair are we talking about here?
\Brian
Tom sez these are HD 21551 = HR 1051 and HD 21552 = sigma Per. Whatever variability there is likely to be microscopic, so the challenge would be to detect the variations all with whatever instrumental setup you have. This would require observing them against at least two other stars to high precision. I’ll bet you can’t do it — but surprise us!
\Brian
Announcements
I have a request. I want this thread to be for actual announcements rather than discussions. If an annoucement provokes a question, please contact me directly.
Tom
Constant Star Observations
Could we put up some data on niu Auriga? It has become well-placed for northern hemisphere observers. V-band-only is okay.
Tom
Spreadsheet output
For new and old observers alike: always use the automatic macro to generate output files from the spreadsheet and don’t manually edit the file. The macro can be found on the PEP targets and data reduction webpage for the moment (there will soon be a big website overhaul).
Also, it is important not to use quotation marks in the observation notes. And if your COMMENT= keyword has multiple fields, separate them with semicolons, not commas.
Observation records that do not follow these rules become a headache to parse when they are downloaded as text.
Tom
January PEP Meeting
I would like to hold the quarterly telecon at 20:00 UTC on either Jan 10 or 17. Please message @tcalderw to let me know your preference.
Tom
Both dates work for me.
Either date is fine for me.
Either date works for me. However, my preference would be January 17.
Happy New Year!!! Kevin
Either work for my schedule.
Should be good set of times for me.
January Telecon
Saturday at 20:00 OTC
Zoom link:
https://zoom.us/j/92039720037?pwd=xDEGxAvH8amo67yihQvIuLwOn1yEaC.1
Slides:
SSPTalk_2026_Jan.pdf (1.3 MB)
For questions please contact me at @tcalderw