Hi everyone
Just a heads up to let you'll know that the famous variable star, Mira (Omricon Ceti) in the constellation Cetus is at maximum right now, sitting at around mag. 2.3. It has an orange colour, and is nice and bright- you can't miss it- it's only about 17deg. away from Jupiter.
This is my first observation of Mira, and it's so exciting to see a bright star appear that wasn't there before.
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Mira is a binary star system that consists of a red giant (Mira A) undergoing mass loss and a high temperature white dwarf companion (Mira B) that is accreting mass from the primary. Such an arrangement of stars is known as a symbiotic system and this is the closest such symbiotic pair to the Sun. Examination of this system by the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows a direct mass exchange along a bridge of matter from the primary to the white dwarf. The two stars are currently separated by about 70 astronomical units.[10]
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Some further reading
here on Mira.
The maximum period of Mira is 21-30 Sept. 2011. So go out tonight!! (apologies for late notice, but I only found out myself yesterday
).
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Because of the form of its light curve, Mira is roughly visible to the naked eye (i.e., brighter than about 6th mag) for 1.5 months before and 2.5 to 3 months after its maximum.
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Further reading
here.