Welcome to my website which is devoted to one of my many and varied interests, variable star astronomy. I am an amateur astronomer originally from Birmingham, England but now living permanently in Sweden. Here you can find information about my current observing programme in addition to links to other sites connected with the visual and CCD observation of variable stars.
Following a gap of 20 years during which my observational interests went into a deep hibernation, I recently re-discovered my interest in variable stars, joining the American Association of Variable Star Observers, the world's premier VS organization. I currently use a pair of large 25x 100mm Celestron binoculars mounted on a sturdy parallelogram mount. These instruments give me access to many of the brighter telescopic and fainter binocular variables on the AAVSO programme. I also have access to a 27.5cm Celestron SCT at my workplace.
Variable stars are stars which change in brightness on time scales ranging from seconds to many centuries. Here is the lightcurve (a plot of the star's brightness in magnitudes over time) for the famous eclipsing variable star Algol,or Beta Persei.
At the risk of using a well-worn cliche, the attraction of variable star observing is the opportunity to do work which is beneficial to the scientific community without the need for expensive instruments.Variable stars offer challenges to observers regardless of the equipment they use, ranging from the cheapest pair of binoculars right up to the most expensive computer-guided telescope and CCD camera combination.
I am also a member of the Grönhögen Astronomical Society based on the Swedish island of Öland.