This week we revisit one of our long term friends in the light curve of the week feature. We have looked at it in week 87, week 114, and week 213. The star 2MASS J21383981+5708470 (or NSW284) is an outbursting Be star and was the focus of our recent paper “A survey for variable young stars with small telescopes: VI – Analysis of the outbursting Be stars NSW284, Gaia19eyy, and VES263“. You can see a full copy of this and other HOYS papers here.
The star shows semi-regular outbursts with a period of about one year. Given the issues with the database, we were not able to follow it in detail this year, but the above image shows the data added since we re-instated the database. It looks like the object has started a slow increase in brightness over the last month or so. It brightened more in the I-band compared to the shorter wavelengths, in accordance to its previous behaviour. Hence, we might see the onset of the next burst – a bit later than it should have been. But it is worth observing the IC139A field, where the source is in, every night if possible to follow the burst.
It currently is 0.3mag brighter than normal, and the strongest previous burst was 0.6mag. So it might still get brighter.