This week we look at the young star GM Cep, an old friend of this feature 🙂 It is situated in the Elephant Trunk Nebula target region.
The light curve shown above shows the data we for the object over the last 500 days. Only the V, R, and I-Band data are shown. The object seems to continue with its usual behaviour, varying on a number of timescales within about one magnitude of its mean. Most notable it has dimming events of very different durations. The slightly lower than normal brightness at the start of the shown light curve is actually the end of an almost 600 day long slight dimming.
However even the longer dimming periods are interspersed by shorter, sharper dimming event. Several are visible in this part of the light curve. We can see a very well observed, almost 1 mag deep event which occurred about 5 days ago. These events are all caused by dust features in the inner disk blocking the light for the observer. Thus, they can enable us to investigate the structure of material in the inner disk.