I must admit I have always had a fascination with red coloured stars and writing the AAQ Monthly Observing lists for the last few years has given me the opportunity to enjoy many fine examples of these. Some have been as one component of a binary system, and others as stand alone single stars. So for something different this month, I have compiled a list of over 50 for you to enjoy over the entire year. I have limited them to targets south of about 25˚ north declination and brighter than magnitude 8.5. The data for this list has come from a number of sources - our own Monthly Observing lists as previously published in the AAQ newsletter being the first. Another list I have used which was very helpful is available in full from the website of the Arizona based  Saguaro Astronomy Club.

This site also has a number of other useful observing lists. At this time I have not had the opportunity to check these targets myself, and you will find I have notated them thus - SAC List. Tim also kindly added some additional double stars that I have notated as - TN-M List. Again, I have not viewed these myself as yet. Thanks also to AAQ members Mary Petr and Lindsay Ball for their favourites, and Peter Culshaw for a number of lists he has discovered on the internet. As usual I have also found Hartung's "Astronomical Objects for Southern Telescopes", "Sky Atlas 2000.0" and "Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion" a great help.

The list has been laid out over a full 12 month time frame, with the optimum viewing month noted, along with the location co-ordinates. By their very nature red stars are often variable in brightness, so you will see that the SAC List objects include the maximum and minimum magnitudes, with the time period in days shown in brackets. The great majority of doubles are of reasonable separation and should be resolvable using modest sized telescopes.

I don't pretend that this list is comprehensive by any means, so if you know of any others that I have not included it would be great to hear from you and I shall add them in.

UPDATE 20/06/09

Since first compiling this list from the sources mentioned above I have carried out my own observations on about 24 of the listed stars. I have added an additional column to the list showing the dates on which this occurred, as well as my own comments on what I could see using my 150mm F8 refractor.

Let me know about your observations, I would be interested in what you could see!