(cba:news) V442 Oph, and other notables

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

The campaign on V442 Oph is about ten days old now.  The star is flashing
a beautiful negative superhump at about 2.9 hours.  But although we have
some coverage from three widely separated longitudes (South Africa, AU-NZ,
and UT/AZ), we don't have really long coverage from any of the sites.  So
the data are not yet suitable for a calibrated merge - which requires some
simultaneity of observation.  We should keep going on this star for a few
more weeks, and I hope that you can get long observing runs since that's
really the key to continuous and calibrated coverage.

V795 Her, time to retire.  Just tweaking down the error bars from here on.

Although I've retired RX1643, more coverage of this star would be quite
useful.  It has the *strongest* quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) of all
the SW Sexers, and another flurry of observation could possibly pin down
the stable signal that underlies (if any).  It's also perfectly placed
for northern observers right now. I give V442 Oph higher priority, but
it's hard to ignore 50 degrees of declination difference.

Two other excellent stars are swinging into view, and nicely perched near
the equator: V1494 Aql and V603 Aql.  These will definitely be our great
campaign stars for July... and it's time to start now.  Lew Cook's
season-starting run on V1494 Aql shows lovely eclipses.  Make friends with
the field, and let 'er rip.

 joe