(cba:news) New stars for July

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

There must have been some cloudy nights on Mauna Kea, because Jonathan has
been tinkering with the CBA website, and... voila! ... a new feature
likely to be of much interest.  Namely, a chronological listing of the 50
most recent data sets submitted to cba-data.  This means that you can see
who is observing a particular star and when -- and if you work hard you
can bask in all the glory, hahaha.

It updates every 15 minutes, and really hates to be idle.

New stars... well it's time to end the vigil for V2400 Oph, on which Bob
Rea has been observing up a storm.  We have 30 nights now and two
longitudes (NZ and SA, latter courtesy of Darragh O'Donoghue), that's
enough for a 2001 study.  Exit V2400.

V1494 Aql... a star of extraordinary interest, but a hiatus is probably
advisable.  As Alon mentioned a few weeks ago, the waveform is much
different from last year, and now resembles some of the "supersoft"
binaries, like V Sge.  Since it erupted 1.7 yrs ago, this is probably
because it IS a supersoft binary right now - heated by a freshly erupted
white dwarf still sitting there at 200,000 K.  A continuous record is
desirable, but we have a well-defined light curve now, and should wait 1-2
months for it to evolve further.  This star will continue to delight for
years to come!

The two most interesting southern stars right are newcomers on this year's
stage...

V442 Oph (1732-16).  We carried out a good observing campaign in 1995,
before we had coverage at multiple longitudes.  High time to do it right!
Very well placed for observation too.

V1223 Sgr (1855-31).  We've only obtained scattered coverage over the
years - this is the year, and season, to do it right.

AND FOR BOREALITES...

V795 Herculis is the all-star of the season, proudly displaying its new
superhumps for all the (northern) world to see.  Let's keep going for
another month!  Plenty of room for new observers, as the grizzled veterans
are slipping off-line to various locations in observer-space (telescope
repair, movies, the beach, who knows, maybe even golf).

And V442 Oph.  Very nice to get some USA (or African, or South American?)
coverage to complement the expected high dose of Kiwi data.


             joe