(cba:news) summer superhumps

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,                                             July 3, 1998.

Back from 2 cloudless weeks in AZ, and the ASP meeting in Albuquerque.
As I mentioned before, the next ASP meeting (nominally July 1-7, 1999)
will be in Toronto and will have amateur-professional collaboration as
its main theme.  I would like to use this to lure as many of you as
possible and have an official CBA workshop there.  Stan tells me that
this conflicts with an important NZ meeting, which I also hoped to
attend.  I don't know what exactly will come of that, but the dates are
immutable... so there it is.

The campaign on RX1940-10 = V1432 Aql is going well, thanks primarily
to Captain Bob.  The two periods in this star beat together with a 50-
day cycle, leading to the expectation that the eclipse waveform will
change with this period.  So our main goal is to get full coverage of
the cycle, meaning no gaps exceeding 2 days.  It's proceeding well so
far.  If the Arizona monsoon rains ever arrive, which they nearly
always do, then we'll need lots of help from other stations.

There's another star I'd like to tout most heavily right now.  Dave
Harvey has started the season on V1315 Aql = KPD 1911+1212.  It's
perfectly placed right now, and his data show fairly strong superhumps,
as well as the obvious and well-known eclipses.  But his data are
aliased and need help from other longitudes.  Anyone out there
with an exotic longitude, we need ya bad!  I think Dave's
comparison star is the bright star near the edge of the Downes & Shara
chart, about 3.5 arcmin SSW from the variable.  But you can use
another if more convenient, as long as you tell me which.  Most of the
observations will be (as usual) in unfiltered light with an ST-7, but
we can transform as long as the effective wavelength is not
tremendously different.

We're on a streak with this star right now, so observations in the
next few days are of even greater value since they will have great
leverage over alias-breaking.

Meanwhile, for the smallscopers, Jerry Gunn and Tonny Vanmunster have
gotten the V603 Aql season off to a good start.  During the upcoming
full moon period, this would surely be the best target for all.

Finally, we have been observing the new X-ray transient at 21 hrs -5
degrees.  It's about 17, too faint for most, but we certainly would
love to get help from exotic longitudes on this guy!

All these stars are hemisphere-neutral.  Australites take note.


                  Joe