Telescope Reviews: My accidental discovery of a bright Mira !!!

Hello variable star folks,

This news comes in a little late, however hopefully still in time to make some follow-up measurements.

On the night of 19th and 21st June, 2012, I was attempting to image Pluto (in Sagittarius) from our Observatory with a C-14 EHD + CGE Pro mount and SBIG ST-8XME CCD. It was just to see how Pluto appears in the image with any discernable movement on another date. While I compare it with DSS image to locate Pluto, I mark an apparent bright star as Pluto. When I cross-check the images of 19th and 21st again, I was able to make my first (accidental) celestial DISCOVERY [first amateur discovery from India in all likelihood! And no doubt Her first CCD discovery, which has also been the quickest - at just the 21st day of usage since its purchase 6 months ago!]

I have been a very active visual DSO observer and visual comet chaser for past few years and not anywhere involved in variable stars. Placed just 1 arc minute away from Pluto, I was astonished to see such a bright new "Nova" just by the sheer appearance of it, which I visually estimated at ~11.5 mag from my images. Any newbie too would have instinctively attributed it as a Nova. I did also check with AAVSO chart plotter but didn't see anything at the source position. It was just hard to believe there was something 'overwhelmingly' bright in my image and too real to be a star than some artefact! I shot an email to CBAT on 23rd June, awaiting them to put it up on their TOCP page as a new Nova candidate. Meanwhile on 25th June I contacted a virtual friend of mine, the legendary Dr. Alan Hale (of comet Hale Bopp fame) and he was able to quickly make a visual estimate at 13.5 mag.

However after an aggravating wait of few days (and they were as hard as any potential discoverer undergoes) I got to see something by CBAT on their TOCP page; it turns out to be a "previously unreported Mira variable star".

http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/unconf/followups/J18351050-1919300.html

I get an email from a senior technical assistant at AAVSO mentioning "Congrats! You have discovered a previously unreported Mira variable star. (just as in the TOCP page). It will eventually be named as Vxxxx SGR, where xxxx is a number."

The reason why it appears bright in my image is it was taken unfiltered, as it was my routine imaging session (I learnt later on that clicking unfiltered images of red stars bright in the infrared side is a BAD idea!). The background source is an ~17th magnitude IRAS 18322-1921 from SIMBAD. The coordinates of this object are - RA 18* 35' 10" / DEC -19* 19' 31".

https://picasaweb.google.com/100263423283309558687/FirstDiscoveryOfACelestialObjectANewMiraVariableStar

If I had imaged Pluto on any other date apart 19th, or even if the new Mira was lurking at the edges of my image I would not have been able to achieve this. Whew...Call it serendipity!

** Coincidentally the bright new Nova which made headlines was discovered just 10 degrees away from my object on 26th of June! ** [Ironical]

ALERT: I sincerely hope the variable star experts here can make follow up measurements of this source, which still should be quite bright. I havent taken an image after 23rd June, since this part of south India is notorious for being clouded most year round, pre and post monsoons.

LESSON LEARNT: When I was direly awaiting the news to go out public like the recent 9th mag Sagittarius Nova went out within a day, I was initially disappointed to know from a senior source at AAVSO over email that variable star discoveries happen so often that the criteria is to refine the light curves than focus on the discovery itself; there are thousands of variable stars known and many get discovered everyday.

As a brand-new discoverer, I was at a stage of just having set an expectation but then had a good lesson for moving ahead. I had an insight that not always do discoveries happen for merit. Sometimes Nature gives you something more meaningful; a selfless discovery which is beautiful than anything of credit. Comets, novae, supernovae and asteroids all buy the discoverer some credit, but not variable stars (and my first discovery was of a variable star when I didnt even imagine these celestial objects could be discovered!). I am glad with this transformation I wish to make such selfless name-less discoveries even in the future.

Thanking all, Amar A. Sharma.