Hi All,
I have received a reply from the highly respected Amateur now professional astronomer Brian Skiff that was posted on AMASTRO and it seems I'm not the first person to see this type of event (not with this star though!)
"Les' star is a 4".5 pair of similar brightness on DSS and 2MASS images. The southeastern component is slightly brighter, and the2MASS colors are those of a garden-variety K0 giant or mid-K dwarf;statistically in this part of the sky it is somewhat more likely to be a dwarf rather than a giant---both very ordinary sorts of stars,
in either case, so nothing obvious about the star color.
I have seen just this sort of phenomenon once, just as Les
has described: that is, a perfectly ordinary field star flaring up
by several magnitudes, then fading back to the previous brightness.
My event was shorter, lasting only a couple seconds total.
Looking at my observing records, the star was GSC 5706-10179 =
UCAC2 28786920 (18 54 34.75 -08 49 55.6 [J2000, UCAC2]),
which is the mag 13 star on the WSW edge of the large planetary
nebula IC 1295. My notes (1981 March 15) say the star flared by
2.5 magnitudes, then dropped back, followed by irregular flickering
for a few seconds. None of the other stars in the field (obviously
a lot of them!) did anything. I was using a 25cm Newtonian at
the time. The star has the color of a slightly reddened K-giant,
which are ubiquitous in the Milky Way.
Back in 1981 I knew about ordinary flare stars, but knew they
didn't erupt that fast (the timescale violates light-travel-time
and simultaneity principles). But we know now about funny stuff
happening on very short timescales, but getting them to happen
around plain-vanilla stars is problematic.
Since we are only beginning to explore this time-domain in
astronomy, it is not surprising there's no ready explanation for
these sorts of observations. I dunno what's going on, but aside
from probably being more fatigued (Scutum in mid-March from the
northern hemisphere....that's 4am!), I am just as convinced as Les
of the reality of what I saw. If it was something new in the field,
you could readily invoke physio/psychological effects, but the event
occurred on an identifiable star.
Watch this space!
\Brian"
So I might not have been dreaming afterall ...
It seems too short to be a flare from a flare-type star (many K-stars and most M-type stars are flare stars). They normally last many minutes and it is waaaaaaay to slow to be a micro-lense event. No explaination yet. Maybe it is a rare and as yet unknown type of event -- who knows
If you've got a suggestion, give a hoy!
Best,
Les D