Spectroscopic changes seen in 1906 in gamma Cassiopeia with a Cooke telesscope

 Stanley E Percival, Merriott Vicarage, Somerset observing with a 3.75 inch Thomas Cooke and Sons telescope reported that the bright hydrogen line C has been very bright recently in Gamma Cassiopeia. 

He reported on May 2^nd 1906 that he failed to see the C line, while on May 4^th he saw it quite distinctly. On May 18^th although the sky was clear and the spectrum steady he barely glimpsed it. 

He notes that in Miss Clerke’s ‘Problems in Astrophysics’ page 248 that it has previously behaved in a capricious way, and if my small Cooke telescope is to be trusted it looks like it is doing so again.

 Spectroscopic changes appear to have started around 1927 so this could be a much earlier report than is generally accepted. The spectroscopic variations did seem to occur some years before the light changes were detected.

Today gamma Cassiopeia is the prototype of a class of eruptive variable stars, theses gamma Cassiopeia stars show irregular light variations of around one magnitude which can last for weeks or decades. Normally magnitude 2.2 gamma has been seen as faint as magnitude 3.0 and as bright as magnitude 1.6

                                                       www.theramblingastronomer.co.uk