Betelgeuse dimming
Taken by James Roger Samworth on January 15, 2020 @
Nailstone, Nuneaton, UK
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Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
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Details:
After recent discussion about Betelgeuse dimming, I thought this might be of interest.
After a bit of rummaging in my image archive I found 2 images of Orion, one from 20/09/19 before the dimming started and one from 15/01/20. They used quite different cameras. The first was from outside with my Sony DSC-HX60 compact camera, and the second with a homemade wide-angle board camera from indoors.
I extracted Orion from each image to compare them. I smoothed the image a bit in "GIMP" using "Gaussian blur" in order to integrate the light from each star. "Gaussian blur" is a linear process so it should not disturb the total brightness of the stars. I then did a bit of crude photometry by using "Curves" in GIMP to estimate the brightness of each of the major stars in Orion (excepting Betelgeuse) and from this I then interpolated the magnitude of Betelgeuse.
Interesting - - -!
The derived magnitude estimate of Betelgeuse came out at 0.55 on 20/09/19 and at 1.45 on 15/01/20
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
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