While reading JH's Observations from the Cape, I came across an appendix where he lists strikingly red stars he made note of over the years of his observing. It covers both the northern and shorthorn hemispheres, and most of the stars were observed while he swept the skies with the 18-inch reflector.
His descriptions make for exciting reading, so I thought to transcribe JH's descriptions into excel and convert the original 1830 coordinate dates into contemporary positions. Steve helped me with that effort as well as providing the contemporary star names. I added the visual magnitude, star type, and spectral class from SIMBAD.
It makes for a good observing project. I've observed a few of them so far, and I have to say many of them are more orange than red. It makes me wonder how star colors were named, whether orange was considered red -- because I don't think there have been changes to the star's composition in 200 years. There might be some explanation in the telescope used and conditions.
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