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Pointed my telescope at the wrong star on purpose and saw something wild
I've been into astrophotography for about 2 years now, mostly doing wide shots of nebulae. Last weekend I got bored with my usual targets and decided to just randomly swing my rig over to a dim star in Cassiopeia that looked kinda lonely. Set my camera to do 60 second exposures for 20 minutes straight, just to see if anything showed up. Turned out it was a double star system with a faint red dwarf companion that I never would have noticed if I didn't just take a chance on something random. Has anyone else had a lucky accident like that where you stumbled onto a cool detail nobody talks about?
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diana_black1mo ago
Tbh you probably weren't looking at a red dwarf, more like a dim M class star that looks reddish through the eyepiece. Red dwarfs are way fainter and harder to spot in a 60 second exposure unless your rig is really high end. Still a cool find though, those tight double systems in Cassiopeia are a nice surprise when you're just messing around.
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hayden1441mo ago
Wait, you mean my "accidental discovery" was actually just mediocre photography with bad lighting?
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