COMMISSION 27 OF THE I.A.U.
      INFORMATION BULLETIN ON VARIABLE STARS
                    NUMBER 300

                               Konkoly Observatory
                               Budapest
                               1968 October 8


         A FAINT, RED VARIABLE NEAR THE NGP


A marked variability has been detected in a faint, late M-type star located
at the 1950 coordinates, R.A.=13^h00.^m3, D.=+31d33', l^II=85d, and
b^II=+86d.


                          [FIGURE 1]


The variability was found during a comparison of a pair of plates (Kodak
103aD+GG11 filter, 20 min. exposure) taken with the Warner and Swasey
Observatory Schmidt telescope. The plates were calibrated use of a nearby
photoelectric standard sequence of Sanduleak (1). It was estimated that the
star showed V=13.5 on May 25, 1962 but had brightened to V=12.3 on April 27,
1963. No additional material is available to determine the nature of the
variability.

On low-dispersion, infrared objective-prism plates taken with the same
telescope, the star is classified as type M8 in the system described by Nassau
and Velghe (2). In accord with this spectral type, the star is very red and has
a V-I index of about 4.0 mag.

If the star were an intrinsically faint dwarf it would be very near (within a
few parsecs) and would be expected to show a large proper motion surveys of
Luyten (3) or Giclas et al (4). This, together with its variability, suggest
that it is probably a halo giant. If we adopt a visual absolute magnitude of
-0.9, the value for late M-type giants given by Blanco (5), the star is
located about 6000 parsecs above the galactic plane.


                                    N. SANDULEAK
                                      P. PESCH
                            Warner and Swasey Observatory
                                 East Cleveland, Ohio

(1) Sanduleak, N., Thesis (unpublished), 1965.
(2) Nassau, J.J., and Velghe, A.G., Ap.J. 139, 190, 1964.
(3) Luyten, W.J., private communication.
(4) Giclas, H.L., Burnham, R., and Thomas, N.G., L.O.B. No. 124, 1964.
(5) Blanco, V.M., Galactic Structure, eds. A. Blauuw and M. Schmidt (Chicago:
   University of Chicago Press), chap. 12.