We revisit the variable star V350Cep in NGC7129 this week – an old friend of the project. The last time we looked at it was about 6 months ago in week 309.
The object is a suspected FU Ori outbursting star, currently in the burst stage. The light curve had remained very constant over several years with the exception of a minor dimming event at the start of the HOYS project. In essence the source had only changed by at most 0.5mag on timescale of a few years. However, lately the source had undergone more short term variations and at some point it looked like it was even returning to its pre-outburst brightness.
Thus, we regularly check what is going on. In the plot above we show the I and V-band data for the last ~900 days. This covers more or less the entirety of the more erratic behaviour. It also shows that in the last two months the object has significantly brightened again, and it is now almost back at the usual magnitude it had prior to the dimming.
The field is now in its prime position for observations (I know the nights are short ;-)) hence we can see what is happening. Will the ups and downs continue? Will it get to its usual brightness and remain boringly non-variable? Or will it return to the pre-outburst magnitudes and essentially disappear from most of our images? We shall see and report back in the future 🙂 …