(cba:news) New stars for 2006

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,                                                 12/29/05

After the onslaught of final exams and letters to write, I've done the
first-pass evaluation of this month's targets.  And it's time for a
complete revamping of the menu.

HT Cam and V701 Tau were eruptive stars, and are gone.  WX Hyi and VW Hyi
are at quiescence; we have good hump timings and can update the
ephemerides accordingly.  Probably time to shift away from these stars -
unless one of 'em jumps into supermax in the next week.

Tau 2 seems to now be in an intermediate state - very annoying for period
search, and indeed for any kind of study.  Suspended temporarily.

FS Aur stays viable - as it always will until we figure out its strange
period structure.  But the period is stable... so let's let it go till
late in the season.

My all-sky recommendations are two: SDSS 0407-06 ("Eri") and V1193 Ori.
Both are nicely astride the celestial equator, transiting near midnight,
and have reported superhump signals in their light curves.  We've never
seen 'em - but then again, we've never looked!  We need to, in order to
evaluate these important reports.  Let's get all feasible continents going
on this!  V1193 Ori is about 14.1, an easy target.  Eri is much fainter,
but has nice deep eclipses to reward your efforts.

And two other stars of a distinctly southern preference.  There's the
immortal T Pyx.  We do it every year, tracking its mysterious and enormous
period increase.  I promise this is the last!  A few weeks of timings, and
the study is finished (and I'll write it up forthwith).  And there's AQ
Men = EC0511-7955.  We've only observed that one year... but one more
year, or likely just one month, will wrap up the study.

And two northern stars too.  Early in the night, there's "Cam" =
HS0506+77.  A newly discovered VY Scl star, definitely ripe for superhump
search; usually at 15-15.5, but with occasional low states.  And DW Cnc:
a nice discovery of 2 years ago, we need to follow up (for the next month
at least) to measure the long-term period change.

That's the new menu. Happy observing!

By the way, let me know if you're considering coming to CA for the SAS/CBA
meeting in late May.

joe