(cba:news) Victory over DI UMa

[Joe Patterson]

                                                    March 16, 1998.

Dear CBAers,

Is ours.  We have the quiescent (orbital) period nailed down, and the
superhumps during the two well-covered superoutbursts repeated with
high accuracy.  The normal outbursts are basically a washout - no
periodic signals.  This means that we can take DI UMa off our list,
except we would still like to know when the outbursts occur - so
*snapshot* magnitudes will be fine, but not time series.

Which means we might be able to finish RZ LMi off before the season
ends.  This is the most excellent of our evening targets these days.
(Of our *regulars* - rare erupters are a different story.)

Speaking of which, I hope someone is watching MM Hya!  Right after I sent
out an alert on this star last week - OK actually it was about 4 d
later - the weather turned steadily bad in Europe (I think) and 
Arizona (I know).  Help, help, we're drowning in the vast seas of open
space in the O-C diagram!  A terrible fate indeed.

For those of you getting started on CBA programs, AM CVn and HP Lib
are excellent targets to start on, assuming you can get your clock good
to 10 s or so.  Or, if you want something even brighter, try RW Sex
or UX UMa - bright and forgiving.

For veterans of last year's EG Cnc wars, I have a paper almost ready
for submission.  Lemme know if you have extra data on this star.  Snapshot
magnitudes are also of extremely great interest, as the star's eruption
characteristics are I'd say the strangest of all known dwarf novae.


    joe