(cba:news) xz eri erupts!

[Joe Patterson]

Sure enough, XZ Eri is flashing beautiful humps and eclipses!  The
eclipses are definitely weird, not quite like any other star... but it's a
real winner.  So far, data from Greg Bolt, Patrick Woudt (SAAO), and here
at MDM.  Not the greatest sky placement for any of us... but with the
spread in longitude, we should manage to clobber the usual problems with
aliasing.

I hope the other programs don't suffer too much.  In particular, BG CMi
*is* well placed, and it's performing very well too, with very large (up
to 0.6 mag) 15 minute pulses.

Plenty of excitement up there.  By the way, another program that we
(basically Jonathan and I) have been carrying out for a few years on
meter-class scopes has been time-series photometry of the most
intrinsically faint and rarely erupting dwarf novae - some of which have
actually never been seen to erupt (but we have our suspicions). Most live
at V=18-22 in quiescence, so not exactly CBA targets.  Critical unknowns
are: do they ever erupt, and if so how often?  I'd be interested in
hearing from any of you who have been looking for these stars often
enough to have a decent documentary record (presumably of upper limits).
Schmeer and Kinnunen - and of course Stubbings - manage to find these
things sometimes in outburst, but I have little idea what to assume from
non-announcements.  Are people looking, or what?  Lots of upper limits
appear in the vsnet data archive... do most people submit to this, or are
people keeping upper limits in private notebooks all over the world?


joe