b Per Obs Campaign Begins

From now until 30 December, I'll be measuring the brightness of b Per.  This system is expected to go into eclipse sometime around 22 December, but no one knows for sure.  It's a complex system.

Here's the alert from AAVSO.

I'm looking at the images from last night (16 December 2021 UTC) and yes indeed I'm seeing it just fine.  I'll be able to grab this data no problem.  Whether the data is useful?  Time will tell.

Here's one image from about 04:00 UTC (target b Per indicated with an arrow):

... and one from 05:00 UTC:

.. and at 06:00 UTC:

I'll start grabbing all this data pretty soon...  I should have this on multiple cameras.  I'll grab all the vids and see what's what....

Those nearby stars are only a couple degrees away so I'll be able to pretty confidently do differential photometry and cheat a lot of the calibration problems associated with absolute photometry.

BTW -- here's the full image to show what I'm dealing with:

Very beautiful, but what a mess!!!!

In any case -- full steam ahead