(cba:news) V803 Cen erupts

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

Berto Monard and Rod Stubbings caught V803 Cen rising to a second supermax
on May 29.  That's the event we (well, our southern branch anyway) have
been waiting for.  We've followed the evolution for 75 days since the last
super, and now just want to end the campaign with a week or so of
rousingly dense time series - a final flourish of trumpets as the curtain
descends.  So let's boost that one up to mega-star status.

The coverage of RX1643+34 was just great, and I've nearly finished writing
up the paper (about another month to clean it up though).  Let me know if
you'd like to receive some of the spliced data near your own observations.
No need to observe that star again unless it changes luminosity state.

V849 Her kind of washed out.  Dave Skillman's data is pretty flat, and
we're not patient enough to wait around for it to get interesting.  Cast
it out.

But V795 Her has returned with its powerful superhumps, and this is
definitely the prime northern target for June.  At magnitude 12.7, good
for all and very peachy for small and middling scopes.

Then there's V2051 Oph, still fairly bright and still the best late target
for southern scopes.  Coverage of this long outburst is really making it
the WZ Sge of the south, although it doesn't have the fancy publicity of
the latter.  Keep up that faithful and wonderful coverage!

I dunno what to make of V4641 Sgr.  For our particular telescopes and
observing styles, I'm inclined to give it quite a bit lower weight than
V803 Cen and V2051 Oph in this month's sky.  I might be wrong, of course.

     joe