(cba:news) U Gem in outburst

[Joe Patterson]

Oooo... Jerry's data show that U Gem is still rising, and in fact very 
fast.  So it may get a lot brighter in the next 1-2 days.  And here it 
is transiting meridians at local midnight, with long winter nights 
available.  This is a really splendid opportunity to launch that U Gem 
campaign we've been waiting for!

Watch for saturation though.  If you observe without filters, you might 
have to go to uncomfortably short integration times.  And if you do, 
spend some time studying the performance of your camera shutter - in 
particular, how repeatable are the integration times when delta-t is 
very short?

I recommend V filter, if you got 'em.

U Gem in outburst shows very weak eclipses, sometimes almost invisible.
Historically, this is what tipped the world off that DN eruptions reside 
in the disk proper, not in a gulp of mass transfer at the disk 
periphery.  But it has never been really well constrained by a study 
through the eruption cycle - just a few odd papers here and there which 
reach somewhat weak/conflicting conclusions based on sparse data.  It's 
up to us to do a really good job now!

I think this one might be good for the Australians too, BTW.  We have a 
giant hole in our northern coverage from California (or Hawaii when Lew 
is there) westward to Norway/Belgium, and it would be mighty nice to 
plug it.  Not so unreasonable at that dec!

joe