This week we look at the star V582Cep, situated in the NGC7129 target field. This target field usually gets a higher number of observations at the current time of the year, as for about 4-6hrs each night it is the only target visible from the northern hemisphere – after all the targets in Orion have set. This of course helps to study all targets in this field for the entire year without significant gaps.
The star is classified as a Long-period variable star. The object certainly varies significantly on long time-scales. But no real periodic or semi periodic behaviour can be seen. Rather variations occur on all sorts of longer timescales. The distance measured by Gaia is just over 1kpc and the object is very red. Indeed it is so bright in the I-Band filter, it is saturated in most of our images in that filter. Thus, we see a pulsating giant star which roughly speaking is about 100 times brighter than the Sun.