BAS Lecture: April 20th 2007
Gary Poyner
Variable Star Observing from Polluted Skies

Gary is a world renowned observer of variable stars, recently clocking up his 200,000th observation, the highest of any UK observer! This is remarkable in itself but when one realizes that his observatory is located 6 miles north of Birmingham city centre with, as Gary graphically showed us, conditions resembling a football ground under full floodlights, it is truly astonishing.

The picture above shows what Gary has to contend with. This is Birmingham at night - or at least the part which is 3 miles east of my home. The city centre, which lies just 5 miles to the south of my location, produces far more light pollution than this photograph shows

Gary’s talk began with a brief and good humoured outline of his (diabolical) observing conditions. However after making the observation that you have to take what you are given, he moved quickly on to describe the many types of variable objects that can be seen even under these conditions. 

These were illustrated with excellent graphics which brought home the true nature of the objects themselves and made them all the more interesting as objects to observe.  For example, watching a faint star at magnitude say, 14 increase in brightness, becomes much more interesting if you know that you are actually observing the effects of a white dwarf accreting material from a red giant companion.
Gary closed by noting the important contribution that amateurs can make to the understanding of variable stars and encouraged all in there audience to take part.
As always Gary’s talk was given with humour and enthusiasm and would have inspired more than one member of the audience to take up the challenge of becoming an observer of variable stars. 

Gary answers questions from John and Fiona after the talk

The vote of thanks was given by Roger Vaughan on behalf of a very full audience.