This week we focus on a star in one of the least often observed HOYS target fields. The light curve shown in the above image is of the star V1787Ori. It is situated in the target field L1641N, which is situated about one degree South of the Orion Nebula (M42) and indeed our most southerly of the normal HOYS targets. This also explains why it has been observed so few times, since it is only available for a very small number of hours (about 2.5 from London) each night in the winter.
The star itself is known as a Herbig AeBe star at a distance of about 390pc. Essentially this means it is a young star, but with a mass above the typical low mass (solar mass) young stars which are called T Tauri stars. In essence it’s a young star that will become a more massive, spectral type A or B main sequence star once it has finished forming.
Our now six years long light curve shows that it behaves like many of the other young stars we looked at in the past. It shows longer term variability in all filters. In this case the amplitudes are of the order of about 0.2 magnitudes. Due to the low cadence of the data, it it not possible to investigate any short term variability. Thus, please do try to observe all our fields, and when they are up, make sure to get the very southernmost fields as they will set very quickly. Of course, if your telescope is further South (say in Spain) then there are much more opportunities to observe these targets.