R Coronae Borealis Redux

Photographer: Greg Parker 
Summary Authors: Greg Parker, Jim Foster

Featured above is the constellation of Corona Borealis (Northern Crown) as observed from the New Forest observatory in Hampshire, England. Corona Borealis can be identified by its smile-like arc of stars having rather similar brightnesses rather than by the presence of any particularly conspicuous stars. It's situated between Boötes and Hercules, has been getting a lot of attention recently since the yellow supergiant star, T Corona Borealis, is about to experience a rapid and significant brightening -- becoming a nova. 

Here, though, my focus is again on the low mass variable star R CrB. The animation above was made using images taken on August 9, 2013, when RCrB was at its minimum brightness (magnitude 15) and on June 6, 2024, when RCrB had increased to magnitude 6, which is how we more typically see it. Please note that you need to click on the image to see the animation. This is a massive increase of approximately 1,000,000-fold! Note that despite the tremendous increase in magnitude, RCrB when at magnitude 6 is only barely a naked eye object in very dark skies.

 

Photo Details: Image taken on June 6 is a 3-frame mosaic. I used the 2 x Canon 200 mm prime lenses and 2 x ASI 2600MC Pro CMOS cameras on the MiniWASP array at the New Forest Observatory. Each frame is composed of 20 x 10-minute subs, so the whole image contains 10-hours of data (but it only took 5 hours of imaging time due to the 2 cameras).

New Forest Observatory, U. K. Coordinates: 50.819681, -1.590349

Related Links:
Inverse Nova, R Corona Borealis
Global Astronomers Await Rare Nova Explosion