rstalnaker

I had a lifelong passion for nature and wildlife observation as well as participating as a volunteer for various government agencies and orgs doing species surveys and migration counts. The total destruction of natural lands and waters surrounding and within even modest sized cities in Florida, plus the crashing populations of species nationally and globally, has caused me to abandon and "look away" from planet Earth and to observe variable stars. I would like to learn photometry but my first goal is to become good at variable star magnitude estimating.

My first few days, before a mentor, I was scanning the brighter stars with binoculars and came upon an asterism, a giant "C", a crescent that fit entirely in my field of view, to the left (my east) of what I later researched to be the star Wezen. I looked up asterisms on the web and this asterism was not listed in any of the sites. It sure looked striking and very prominent to me. That drew me to the Canis Major system for variables and I found Omega Canis Majoris was part of that crescent, thus my favorite variable became ome CMa.