TX and AH Draconis

It has been a difficult time to get any observing done recently what with the cloudy skies we have been experiencing of late. I tried a couple of times on the 19th and 31st August to do some variable star observing but cloud just kept getting in the way. I had some more success over a week ago on the 5th September and was able to get observations made of TX and AH Draconis. At the time when I was observing, the moon was 2 days past first quarter but low in the sky to the south. There was a little bit of light cloud but this didn't really make an impact until after 11pm BST. There is no problem with twilight now after 10pm BST when I started observing. These stars in the constellation of Draco aren't far from the star Eta Draconis which was still high in the sky to the west.

At 21:38 UT I could make out star P on BAA chart 106.03 with my 7x50 bins. This meant that my limiting magnitude was fainter than 8.4. At 21:46 I estimated that TX was marginally brighter than the star N (=7.7 mag.) on the chart but fainter than K (=7.0 mag.). So my estimate was K(2)V(1)N (one "point" from N but two "points" from K) which made it magnitude 7.5 to one decimal place.

Moving on to AH Dra I observed at 22:01 UT that this star was brighter than star 8 (=8.4 mag.) on the chart but fainter than star 1 (=7.1 mag.). In fact, it was much closer in brightness to 8 than it was to 1, so my estimate was 1(3)V(1)8 which made it magnitude 8.1 (to 1 d.p.).

This last observation was a bit rushed as I could see a bank of cloud moving in from the south which would end my night. However, I don't think either of these observations are in too much disagreement with other observers from the BAA.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2022