(cba:news) July stars

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

Well, now that the Moon has moved outa the way, we can bring down the
curtain on V603 Aql.  The intense 40-day campaign is over.  Results in a
few weeks - there's so much data to analyze!  (To a first approximation:
our old friend, the apsidal superhump; the nodal superhump wasn't
obvious.)  The star remains a fairly interesting target, though;
additional coverage will track the O-C of the superhump and improve the
quality of the search for weaker signals.

The two northern targets to focus on now are V533 (about 14.7) and V1974
Cyg (I think about 16, but I really dunno).  The latter is particularly
interesting, because of fancy press clippings ("Nova of the Century") and
more especially because this year's spectroscopy shows that the 1992
nebula has faded now and left a pure nova remnant to study.  The only
light curve this year shows a nice hump, origin unknown.  Great target for
all-night coverage from borealites.

V533 Her is also plenty interesting - beautiful superhump in Feb-Mar, and
now we'd like another month to establish a full 6-month baseline for
period studies.  Decently bright and well-placed.

For CBAers of the other hemispheric persuasion, I recommend V4743 Sgr and
V1223 Sgr as main (most-of-the-night) targets, with the pulse-timers AO
Psc and FO Aqr as second targets.

   joe