In between project and decided to have a little fun with some EAA stuff so I checked out my favorite carbon star T-Lyra. This was always my favorite visual Carbon Star because it just stood out from all the rest of the background stars. There are many carbon stars but this one was always fun to show at public observing sessions. I used my L-Pro and did a Photometric Color Calibration in PI for star color accuracy.
The Carbon star T-Lyra is located couple degrees south-southwest of Vega in the constellation Lyra, the Harp. Safari Pro lists its visual magnitude at 8.5 but in doing more research is does vary somewhat from 7.5 - 9.8 (This spec varies somewhat depending on what reference I used) and as it dims it takes on a deeper red color. This is actually easily seen if one follows its cycle.
The stars spectral type is C8 which gives its "red" in color and translates into a temperature of about 3500k and is approximately 2400 light years away from us.
Carbon stars go way back to their discovery in the middle of the nineteenth century by Father Angelo Secchi, one of the founders of spectral classification. Carbon stars are the source of much if not most of the carbon in the Universe.
I started observing these beautiful red gems back in the mid 90's when I read an article in Sky and Telescope about them. Here is a link to Carbon Stars in general if your interested in learning more about them.
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/carbon-stars-will-make-see-red1203201401/I hope you enjoy this beautiful star as much as I do and thanks for looking!
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