Similar to last week, we have a look at an object we investigated before to see how it is ‘behaving’. We have a look at the young star GM Cep in the Elephant Trunk target field. It is classified as an Orion variable but also as a UX Ori star. This means it shows deep dimming events caused by material in the inner disk.
In the plot we show the entire HOYS light curve in the V and I band. For ease of viewing we do not show the other filters, but all of the light curve is also covered in R and a large part in B. Additionally, there are a few U and Halpha data points. Our light curve is now 2400 days (6.5yr) long, with basically no gaps due to the northern position.
We see that the source indeed behaves according to its classification. It has undergone three long deep dimming events visible in our data. Additionally there are several much shorter occultation events. They are covered better in the later years where our cadence is better, but can also be seen as single data point events in the first half of the data set.
In the last year, since we looked at the object last, it had one of the deep occultations, recovered, and now seems to be moving towards another faint state. The target now becomes more easily visible, hence we will be able to trace what happens next over the summer.