Observatoire de la belle étoile: mai 2020

vendredi 22 mai 2020

BeSS 2019 statistics

Here are the statistics per year, overall - we see that 2019 is a record year (not counting 2007 as those were mainly archives from several years):

Here are BeSS top observers as of 22-june-2020 (note that I'm now over 45000 orders and over 2000 Halpha spectra):

The trend is up for Halpha orders/spectra (year of acquisition):

Cumulated, ths is more than 21000 high resolution (R>5000) Halpha spectra/orders in BeSS from amateurs:

Distribution by country still show France and Europe as top ones - more observers around the World are needed.

Details per year/observers:

Thanks to Frank Houpert, here are the statistics for BeSS Halpha spectra/orders and observing time for the year of 2019. It is interesting to look at it from total acquisition time perspective:

Observer's location on a global map, from 2018 data, also show uneven distribution:

BeSS 2000th Halpha spectrum milestone

On the night of 21 may 2020, my automated spectra acquisition script acquired my 2000th spectrum for BeSS Be Star Spectra database!

I also just crossed a key milestone with more than 1000 Halpha spectra (23368orders) acquired with the automated acquisition script in PRISM!

My overall Observatory log including night of 21 may 2020, since the constuction of the observatory almost 5 years ago:

12 Vul outburst

On 21 may 2020, I took a spectrum of 12 Vul to find out it outbursted. It is also visible on Hbeta and even Hgamma:

Lucky, I also took a screen capture during 12 Vul acquisition, excellentes conditions (turbulence et focalisation):

mercredi 20 mai 2020

There is a gap in BeSS in march/april but recent spectra from Valérie Desnoux show that it's back into absorption now.

Here are the graphs with BeSS spectra as of today - again, many thanks to all active observers of this star!

As it is doing an outburst rather frequently in the past few years, it is certainly very interesting to start monitoring it again for this new observing season.

From Coralie Neiner on Spectro-L discussion group:

Noel Richardson has used the BeSS data of V442 And to derive an ephemeris of its emission level. This star seems to be one of the few Be stars for which the outbursts are quite regular.

His model predicts that the next emission maxima should occur on July 13 (2020), January 9 (2021), and September 20 (2021) within an error of a few days.

Each outburst lasts several weeks, so it would be ideal to start observing this target about 1 month before the above dates and continue until emission has decreased (i.e. another 1 month after emission maximum).

So please, consider observing V442 And starting on June 13 (or as soon as your site permits its observations after that date), once per night and until mid-August, and upload your data in BeSS. This will allow us to confirm the validity of the ephemeris and the periodicity of the outbursts.

So critical observing periods should be: