Proposal #232

John Percy described the interesting history of RU Cam in “RU Cam: The Reluctant Cepheid Revisited " JAAVSO Vol 49#1 p.46. This CW cepheid variable has shown amplitude and period variation during the many years it has been observed by AAVSO. John's paper makes the case for continued observations of this star to get a better measure of recent period fluctuations. While there are CCD observations being entered into the AID, John has told me in private communications that these occur clustered in time and are not ideal for analyzing the 21-22 day period. At 70 deg N dec, this star is should be observable at airmass better than 2 from all three US BSMs sometime during the night every day of the year.
I propose that an observation in B,V and I be added to NH, TX and NM BSMs with 3 images each filter in order to facilitate stacking. A frequency of one per week per telescope should give a much better set of observations to shed light on the period. I will analyze the images and submit them to the AID. I will coordinate with John on analysis.
Recent observations in the AID indicate these magnitude ranges:
B 9.4-9.8
V 8.3-8.8
I 7.3-7.7
Thank you for considering this proposal.