(cba:news) estrellas de agosto

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,                                             July 27, 1998.

Ready to ring down the curtain on AM CVn and V603 Aql -- former because  
of twilight, latter because Jerry Gunn's long data stream sufficiently
describes its present behavior (similar to 1994 but less pronounced).
Some of you southerners should get some parting shots on HP Lib; that
one has another 4-6 weeks of life.

That XTE star is interesting, but impossibly faint (19th) for nearly
all of us.

The most interesting centrally placed stars remain RX1940-10 = V1432 Aql 
and KPD 1911+1212 = V1315 Aql.  The former has been relentlessly chased
by Cap'n Bob.  Keep that a'goin', it's needed to disentangle the very
closely spaced periods in this star.  We need to keep that campaign 
going through mid-September.  For the latter, we need 2-3 more weeks.
We've been using the comparison star near the edge of the Downes-Shara
chart, about 3.5 arcmin SSW from the variable.

Although V603 Aql now bows out as a small-scope target, V Sagittae
comes back in.  We did it last year and published the results in the
April 1998 PASP.  The star has attracted a lot of interest, and we should
now undertake a trickier study: to find the mean light curve at its 
several luminosity states (actually the luminosity states span a
continuum, but it would be nice to get mean light curves in bright,
faint, and intermediate states).  Practically this just means a whole
lotta coverage over the rest of the season - only later can we figure
out when it was in what state.  I recommend it highly to the 8-10 inch
telescope owners.

Still no pulse timings on AO Psc or FO Aqr!  Horrors!  Very, very
untrue to our mission.  All are shamed.

For borealites in the morning sky, our friends V592 Cas and TT Ari are
back.  Let's start the season propitiously on them.

You aussies and kiwis out there - I promise to root for all of your
international sports teams, if you could help us out on V1315 Aql.
I'm having a terrible time with the 24-hr alias, and your longitude
holds the key.


                            joe