Dear CBAers,                                            Dec 31 1998

The runs on large southern telescopes (Kemp, Feygina: Tololo; Meintjes,
Buckley: SAAO) have just ended.  Marc Bos and Paddy McGee have been 
steadily observing in NZ/AU, and quite likely other New Zealanders too, 
since they have a record of popping up unexpectedly with a month of 
data.

The initial targets of this global coverage were TV Col and AH Men.  I
think we did OK on each.  In the last week another fish, T Pyx,
jumped onto the menu.  I hope that some of you at longitudes away from
Cerro Tololo got some coverage; if so, we can do a much better job with
the slow variations in this star.  Coverage over the next two weeks
would still be very desirable - after that, we should retire T Pyx till
the next opportunity at multi-longitude coverage.

For those of you following in detail the strange saga of this star, the
0.0762 d wave is perfectly tracking the binary ephemeris we derived during
1996-7.  The binary is blowing itself apart on a timescale of 4x10**5
years!

Here's the status of other stars:

CP Eridani. Just finished 3 weeks of coverage, nice record of superhumps 
and up-and-down excursions certainly looking like dwarf nova eruptions.
Probably it's too late in the season for good time series, but snapshots
in January may establish the time of the next superoutburst (the last one
was just ending when our campaign started on Dec. 10).  We use the V=15.54
comp just NE from the variable.  CP gets to a whopping 16.5 in 
superoutburst.  Sure would be nice to know that recurrence period!

TV Columbae. I think the season's over.

AH Mensae = Men 1 = H0551-819. The fun never ends. The best southern target
(except for T Pyx in the next coupla weeks), with RR Pic second.

******

Alon Retter starts a brief campaign on BK Lyn = PG0917+342 tonight. I
think it's high time that we get back to that star!  We last left it
superhumping vigorously in 1994.  At V=14.4, it's a great target for
long time series from northern telescopes.  I think borealites should
start intensive coverage right away on this star.  Alon will cover only
three nights from Wise Observatory, but it's the right time to get
going on it.  We should go for two months.


They tell me there's some sort of calendar disruption tonight.  People
take these leap seconds too seriously.


                                                     Joe