This week we look at the star OT Mon near the Cone Nebula. The object is a known T-Tauri star and the light curve shows that it is variable on several timescales. It was much fainter in the first year of data we have before it generally got brighter. It still shows dimming events, some of which are longer, and others are very short in duration (a few days) but can be quite deep.
The Gaia parallax of the source is very uncertain with a high value of excess noise. This can be caused by the variability of the object and or a companion star. Future Gaia releases will be able to shed some light on this.
We also show two images of the field near the star. They are actually the first images from the Liverpool Telescope we had taken last night from our campaign to monitor the star KH15D nearby. The left image is a composite in the V, R, and I filter. The right image is a composite in the U, B, and V filter. We labelled OT Mon and KH15D in the right image. Weather and Moon position permitting we should get these images now each night and also an H-Band infrared image). Can we please remind everyone to try to image the field nightly in Hydrogen alpha if you are able to.