(cba:news) DV UMa and V405 Aur

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

DV UMa has faded a lot and the Moon is nearly full, so that campaign is
now over.  Poor weather made our coverage a bit scattered, so it was much
less successful than I hoped.  Although we definitely have enough to
determine the superhump period with good precision, we don't get that much
information out of our sparsely covered eclipses.  We do have very good
coverage at *minimum* light (about 18.8) earlier in the year, plus fair
coverage from the 1997 superoutburst.

So here's what I suggest.  Send me whatever bits you have left from the
1999 coverage.  This will help fill out the in-progress DV UMa study.  But
the people at Ouda (Uemura and Kato) have asked several of you for data to
accompany and fill out their time series, and my guess is that they've
done a very good job with coverage of this outburst - that the scientific
return is maximized by making your data available to them.  So I recommend
doing that.  Who knows, maybe it will even lead eventually to erasing
through collaboration our one zone of ignorance on the planet
(Asia-Pacific in the north) - which we've been hoping for for years.

I'd use the data too but at a much lower level, probably just to measure
the period and compare with 97.

On another subject, we've started an intensive campaign on RX0558+5353 =
V405 Aur.  This star should survive moonlight quite well, so now's the
time to hit it with your full fury.  7-10 days of coverage should do the
trick.

Onrushing twilight has probably clobbered IP Peg, but U Gem season is just
starting and we have a nice collection of orbital light curves.  We should
try to document how all these change in the weeks leading to and following
outburst.  Very rewarding star to observe!

Parole board met and grudgingly authorized me to leave.  But I'm still
here and having trouble getting outa here.  A lingering aftereffect of
Life in the Little House.


     joe