(cba:news) Stars for January

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

I'm finally back in New York now for good, after all those (mostly
unsolicited) travels.  Let's catch up on targets...

QY Per, IP Peg, and CW Mon have all expired as good targets, due to
various combinations of faintness, Sun position, outburst fades, etc.
CW Mon is good for a few hits over the next month, though.

V405 Aur = RX0558+5353 is also a done deal - we have all we need.

Two really good targets now are FS Aur and BY Cam.  These are the choice
morsels for northerners.  We need about 3 weeks of close coverage of each.
The former is yer basic  mystery star.  The spectroscopy clearly shows
Porb=0.059 d, and the photometry shows a big hump at 0.143 d.  What are we
ever to do with such a weirdo?  For starters, find out if the latter is
actually a stable wave, or drifts a bit.  BY Cam is a magnetic CV (more or
less an AM Her star) with a rotation period slightly discrepant from the
orbital.  The two periods beat together in ~6 d, so over 3-4 weeks we can
get very fine resolution of how the two periodic processes play out in the
light curve as their relative phase changes.

In the south, it's still CN Ori.  No takers so far, but it's in a very
long semi-outburst state, and it would be pow'f'l interesting to see what
happens to its hump in such a state.

I'll write a longer note over the weekend!

   joe