The Meinunger "Nicht Rote" Objects

Abstract

Four high-latitude slow variable stars have been noted by Meinunger (1972) as &#34;nicht rote&#34; (&#34;not red&#34;) objects and thus curious. We have previously reported (Margon & Deutsch 1997) that one of these objects, CC Boo, is in fact a QSO. Here we present observations demonstrating that the remaining three are also highly variable active galactic nuclei. The most interesting object of the four is perhaps S 10765 (= NGP9 F324-0276706), which proves to be a resolved galaxy at z=0.063. Despite the rapid and large reported variability amplitude (~1.6 mag), the spectrum is that of a perfectly normal galaxy, with no emission lines or evident nonthermal continuum. We also present new spectroscopic and photometric observations for AR CVn, suggested by Meinunger to be an RR Lyrae star despite its very faint magnitude (<B>=19.4). The object is indeed one of the most distant RR Lyrae stars known, at a galactocentric distance of ~40 kpc.