The LPV program was established in order to concentrate visual observers on high value targets with long observational histories. Since we have long histories on these stars, we can monitor for long-term evolutionary changes. It will be a long time before we have similar photometric histories from surveys to do this work.
We need visual observers to continue to work these program stars.
I've been looking at the number of unique visual observers and total visual observations of program stars from 2016 to 2020 and the trends are not good.
Unique visual observations are down 23% from 2016 and visual observations are down 19%.
While some program stars are still being well observed and even trending upwards, I found that 197 out of the 388 program stars saw large dips (>10%) in observations relative to their 5 year average.
I'm going to keep drilling down on my lists and will highlight specific stars which require more attention. So keep a look out!
As always, the LPV program should be the cornerstone of your visual observation program. A spreadsheet of the program can be found on the LPV section webpage and is searchable in VSX.
Let's give these stars the love and attention they deserve!
Clear Skies,
Rich (RRIA)
Here are 42 program stars currently well positioned in the sky which have seen >20% drops in visual observations of the past 5 years. please give them love. AH Dra
BO Mus
R Cam
R Cen
R Com
R Hya
R Nor
R Sco
R Vir
RR Boo
RR CrB
RR Sco
RS Lib
RS UMa
RU Vir
RV Cen
RX Boo
RX Cen
RY Dra
RZ Sco
S Boo
S CrB
SS Oph
SW CrB
T Aps
T Cen
T CVn
T Nor
TT CrB
U Boo
U Cen
U Oct
U Ser
U Vir
V CrB
V CVn
V Oph
X Her
Y UMa
Z Boo
Z CrB
Z Sco
AH Dra
BO Mus
R Cam
R Cen
R Com
R Hya
R Nor
R Sco
R Vir
RR Boo
RR CrB
RR Sco
RS Lib
RS UMa
RU Vir
RV Cen
RX Boo
RX Cen
RY Dra
RZ Sco
S Boo
S CrB
SS Oph
SW CrB
T Aps
T Cen
T CVn
T Nor
TT CrB
U Boo
U Cen
U Oct
U Ser
U Vir
V CrB
V CVn
V Oph
X Her
Y UMa
Z Boo
Z CrB
Z Sco
Most of these stars are included in the AAVSOnet survey observation plans. So they have been observed regularly over the years.
Someone could make a request to the AAVSOnet via the proposals page ( https://app.aavso.org/aavsonet/proposal/ ) to have these images recovered from archive and sent to their VPhot account for processing.
The only stars not in the AAVSOnet survey archive are:
AH_Dra,
BO_Mus,
R_Cen,
R_Nor,
RR_Boo,
RR_CrB,
RX_Boo,
RY_Dra,
SW_CrB,
TT_CrB,
X_Her,
Y_UMa,
I've added these to my observation plans.
Cheers,
George
Quite a few of these are bright, fairly low-amplitude red stars. In fact I used to observe AH Dra, RR/SW CrB, RX Boo, RY Dra, X Her and Y UMa with binoculars. Many of this type of variable can go through long periods (no pun intended but what the heck!) of inactivity.