I have a new favourite star. I came across it while panning the constellation Lyra to see if I?d habitually overlooked anything on my visits to M57 or Epsilon Lyrae (the double-double). As I skimmed south-west of Vega, last night, my scan was suddenly brought to a screeching halt by the reddest star I?ve ever seen.
How red was it? It was so red that I actually spent several seconds checking my optics, even to the point of re-cleaning my glasses, to make sure that its brilliant ruby-red colour wasn?t due to some chromatic effect.
I had found T Lyrae, a carbon star with a redness rating of 5 which on the scale of 1-5 is as red as they get. All carbon stars are variables, and T Lyrae is listed as an LB which puts it in the slow irregular class. This means that a regular period for its brightness fluctuations is not evident or that not enough data has been collected to discern what that period might be.
Regardless, with a magnitude range of 7.8 – 9.6, there will always be plenty of sparkle to set this fiery jewel apart from the surrounding field of dimmer white stars.
The coordinates for T Lyrae are RA: 18:32:20 DEC: 36:59:55
In late fall, Lyra becomes an early evening constellation so make a point to grab this one while you can.

Glenn

UPDATE:

Ann Tekatch reports that T Lyrae attained its maximum known brightness this past August so is expected to be in its dimming phase. Carbon stars get redder as they get dimmer so this will be an interesting star to keep tabs on (while we can). – GM

I just had another look at the light curve for this star, Glenn, and it’s all over the place! Red stars are difficult to estimate and the data for T Lyrae seem to reflect that difficulty. My best guess is that it is dimming, but only time will tell. It’ll be interesting to follow it and see what it does. – Ann T.