(cba:news) stars for august

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

Back from another trip - thanks for your patience, and I'll now get down 
to CBA biz!

The major targets of July are mostly due for retirement.  VY Aqr is 
still flopping around with "echo outbursts" and exhibiting some 
superhump activity.  It's still a decent target, but harder now because 
the humps are getting tough to track.  So I'm kind of middling about it.
It's no longer possible to get really long runs on GW Lib, so that one 
also deserves semi-retirement.

Jerry Foote has found powerful superhumps at 2.5 hrs from MN Dra, and 
it's definitely time to launch a strong campaign on this interesting 
northern "period-gap" star.  Our previous efforts kind of fizzled, but 
Jerry's humps look we'll got some very fine results from it.  Act fast!
We've hardly ever observed, so just pick out a good comparison star and 
let 'er rip.

Two other good northern targets are worth highlighting.

One is WZ Sge. We've never done a long campaign at quiescence, and it's 
now perfectly placed.  Let's start it up!  Examine the images carefully, 
though - there's a contaminating star about 11 arcsec away, so poor 
seeing or drive issues might make this target unfeasible.  Decently 
bright at 15.2.

The other is SDSS2333+15 (Peg).  This shows several periods in the 
tens-of-minutes range, so it's a perfect target for our network which 
can disentangle periods very well.

And if you need a brighter target, I recommend AO Psc; it's at mag 13.4 
and a (nicely matched) 14.3 min period.  At 2254-03, it's good for all 
hemispheres.

A good target for australites is BW Scl; I'm about to finish our 
multi-year study of it, and a final season of coverage would be great.

More in a few days.  Now that I'm back in New York to stay, I can catch 
up on all the personal correspondence I've neglected...

joe