Coming back from a rather long hiatus, I decided revisit some variable star work I did about a year ago.  I observed a star in the Flame Nebula that was varying in brightness and confirmed its identity as ASASSN-VJ054124.25-014934.9 (with much appreciated help from Skywatcher johny); the location of the star is indicated on the earlier post.  One of the fun things to do with variable stars is to check whether or not the period has changed; such changes reveal that the star or system of stars is evolving in some manner (like mass transfer for binary star systems, for example).  So I set about getting more observing runs and in the process generated a couple of decent images of the nebula which are posted herewith, each with about 1.5 hour integration times.  I managed three new data sets to go with the original data set from last year.  I quickly realized that a 2.5 hour observing run out of a 2.87557 day period is only a small snippet, which meant that getting enough data to really determine the period experimentally is basically a bridge too far and I decided to cut my losses and reserve serious studies for much shorter period variables.  Nonetheless, I did end up with a practiced protocol and some fun observations.  The four light curves I ended up with (using Muniwin) are shown in Revision C.

Everything was complicated because moonlight, flaky tracking and wind shudder on occasion made the data a little sketchy and I couldn’t get Muniwin to read the same comparison stars from run to run.  That forced me to manually measure magnitudes off selected fit images (using AstroImageJ) to calibrate the results to a given set of comp stars.  The final light curve is shown in Revision D with both raw Muniwin magnitude and calibrated magnitude scales based on the AstroImageJ work and the known magnitude variation of the star, which is a change of 0.5 magnitude.  I also added a facsimile of what the real light curve might resemble.  What is rewarding is that eclipsing variable stars basically have a two peak cycle, one peak of dimming for the bigger star eclipsing the smaller star and one peak of dimming for the smaller star eclipsing the bigger star (or the two taking turns eclipsing one another if they are the same size).  As a result, a half cycle (0.5 phase) is generally the span between two successive peaks and my data matched that criterion quite well.  Fun stuff!

Relevant data:
-- 4 data sets, all MST: 12/30/2021, 1/31/2023, 2/7/2023, and 2/12/2023
-- Approximately sixty images per data set, both for stacking and for photometry with Muniwin
-- Exposures of 30 seconds and 60 seconds per sub depending on the data set
-- All images unfiltered
-- William Optics 103 ZenithStar APO refractor 
-- Solomark 60 mm guidescope
-- Skywatcher EQM-35 GOTO mount
-- ASI294MC Pro main camera, ASI224MC guiding camera
-- ASIAir plus controller
-- Sofrware:  Muniwin, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoise AI, StarTools, Astra Image, Microsoft Excel, Stellarium, AstroImageJ