Variable, nova or nothing?

[RUSirius (Emma)]

I took a few milky way photos on Friday night and have a difference in a couple that I would like some help explaining. Can anyone tell me whether a star around the area of Alpha Circinus/Co Circinus would have been expected to brighten significantly or do anything weird brightness wise on Friday night? I will start looking into it a bit more myself too, but thought someone might know off hand.

[Terry B]

Can you post the images and a reasonable decription of where they are pointing?
I can then see if there are any known variables in that area.

[bojan]

Any update on this?
I did alpha Cir with 135mm on 22nd.. nothing unusual there, as far as I can tell.

[Glenn Dawes]

Originally Posted by RUSirius

I took a few milky way photos on Friday night and have a difference in a couple that I would like some help explaining. Can anyone tell me whether a star around the area of Alpha Circinus/Co Circinus would have been expected to brighten significantly or do anything weird brightness wise on Friday night? I will start looking into it a bit more myself too, but thought someone might know off hand.

Hi Emma,

I assume you are saying that you took 2 photos of the same region that night and there was a strange star like image on one and not the other.

A number of years ago I did a novae search programme of the Milky way using just a normal 35mm camera with 55mm lens. I saw this effect a lot and that's why I took multiple images of every field. This saved me from reporting a 7th magnitude nova about once a month! I bet you picked up a point meteor (ie. one coming straight at the camera).

Regards

Glenn