From jop at astro.columbia.edu Sun Aug 1 06:55:25 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:55:25 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) FW: V592 Her in outburst!?] Message-ID: <4C55529D.7010607@astro.columbia.edu> Gary Poyner forwards Maciej's observation that V592 Her is in outburst at 14.1. This still needs confirmation... and 14.1 might signify a fainter ("normal", i.e. non-super) outburst... but since the star is normally at 21, anything you can see on small-scope images is news. And any news on this star is big news. In particular, long time series now are vital; last time around (1998), we got good superhump coverage, but - as usual - only sketchy coverage of the early superoutburst, which sometimes discloses evidence of the exact Porb. Send any confirmation/refutation, and fire up the time series! joe Maciej Reszelski has confirmed that the ROP star V592 Her is indeed in outburst. This is the first outburst detected since the Superoutburst of Aug 26th 1998. From jop at astro.columbia.edu Sun Aug 1 07:24:21 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:24:21 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) xmm1151-62 gossip Message-ID: <4C555965.4080803@astro.columbia.edu> Greg Bolt has filled in a missing longitude (Western Australia), and the next few days, perhaps, will be critical in solving the alias problem of this fascinating slow nova. Fire up those telescopii australis! joe From jop at astro.columbia.edu Sun Aug 1 19:31:34 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2010 19:31:34 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) V592 Her bright! Message-ID: <4C5603D6.8070102@astro.columbia.edu> Greg Bolt about 12 hours ago, and several Europeans a few hours ago, confirmed the V592 Her outburst. At 14th magnitude, a great target for everyone! Even, at +21 degrees, possibly some southerners. joe From jop at astro.columbia.edu Fri Aug 6 18:07:02 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:07:02 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) XMM1151-62 ans HS1813+61, mostly Message-ID: <4C5C8786.3070703@astro.columbia.edu> Dear CBAers, Success on XMM1151. Despite the awkwardness of (western!) Centaurus in August, we did manage to extract the orbital period of this odd (or maybe odd) new CV. Chris Stockdale jumped on it right away, and along with Berto, Greg, and Si Lowther (a new observer from NZ; the usual NZ stalwarts must have been skiing), the longitude spread was good enough. I think ATel 2777 is about to come out: http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=2777 This should be a major target next year. It's time to ring down the curtain on HS1813+61. The star is about 1 magnitude fainter than in our previous campaign... and this has greatly reduced the superhump signal (which is quite hard to track). As a consolation prize, we get the orbital signal - which is nice, and not previously seen in photometry, though previously known from radial velocities. Anyway, it's time to move on to other - and generally easterly - stars. In the north, I strongly recommend WZ Sge and GD 552 = Cep 1, both hugely important stars (in our understanding of CV evolution), yet strangely unmolested by CBA campaigns. The previous list of DQ Hers applies too. I'll send out a full letter tomorrow morning. joe From jop at astro.columbia.edu Sun Aug 15 05:04:32 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 05:04:32 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) cba august targets del norte, mainly Message-ID: <4C67ADA0.8010408@astro.columbia.edu> Dear CBAers, Lots of great data coming in this month! WZ Sge, Cep 1, and FO Aqr are getting really good coverage, for which I'm grateful. Bill Goff has apparently got that cloudless CA weather machine going. I had forgotten to mention V592 Her last message, which maybe is why our campaign on that star is a little weaker - plenty enough to keep cycle count (the most critical thing) but not yet enough to parse fine structure in the superhumps - which could reveal the elusive Porb. So it's worth saying: V592 Her continues to be a fine and important target, as long as you can still get good data on it. On the other hand, Hercules is a fading enterprise... and it's quite possible that patching together 3-hour runs, even a lot of them, may prove insufficient. Since long runs on (almost) any star are greatly preferred, you might want to forget Hercules and concentrate on some other excellent August targets. It's kind of an all-in or all-out situation... take yer pick. The coverage on FO Aqr and AO Psc is superb, and we can suspend those stars until roughly October. Thanks to Tut and George for all those great runs! I'd love to see more and longer runs on WZ Sge and Cep 1... and would like to revive OT2138+26 (the bright optical transient in Pegasus during May 2010). If the star is now at quiescence, that would be great, since we've been waiting for that... and if it's still ravaged by superhumps, well that would be mighty interesting too! Partially due to XMM1151-62, I'm inspired to raise our effort on the recent "old novae"... and that means V4743 Sgr and V1494 Aql. Both of these are faint, kind of hard to do, but they both contain - or recently contained - strong supersoft X-ray sources which should endow their light curves with nice periodic signals. OK, maybe not that nice, with the stars being so faint... but periodic signals nonetheless. See if you can get 'em when you get a break from Moon, clouds, and other potential hazards. joe From jop at astro.columbia.edu Sat Aug 28 16:35:39 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:35:39 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) the DQ Her stars Message-ID: <4C79731B.7050400@astro.columbia.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: cbaaug25.10 URL: From jop at astro.columbia.edu Mon Aug 30 10:39:34 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:39:34 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) another blow against conventional wisdom... Message-ID: <4C7BC2A6.4070609@astro.columbia.edu> Oops. Now there's a nice correction! David Boyd sent in the first of the season's runs on IGR0023+61 and MU Cam. They're both flamboyant pulsators! (see attached time series). On the one hand, it'll make cycle counting really easy - no long runs needed. But on the other hand, if we *do* get long runs, we can study these pulsations, and their possible sidebands, in great detail. Mighty good for those long northern nights (when they get long, that is). joe -------- Original Message -------- Subject: (cba:news) the DQ Her stars Except for a few garish guys like FO Aqr and RX0704+26, DQ Her amplitudes are usually low enough that you can't really spot the individual pulses. If you have a suitable analysis program (something like PERANSO), you can tell at night's end whether you have a detection. Good luck! joe ____________________________________________________________ Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA) mailing lists https://cbastro.org/communications/mailing-lists/ -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: CAM438DB URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: CAS438DB URL: From jop at astro.columbia.edu Mon Aug 30 17:23:50 2010 From: jop at astro.columbia.edu (Joe Patterson) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:23:50 -0400 Subject: (cba:news) Fwd: [baavss-alert] Lanning 420 in Outburst Message-ID: <4C7C2166.8040906@astro.columbia.edu> Hi CBAers, This looks like it might be a rewarding target. It's a new one on me. Send any report to cba-chat so we can find out whether it's worth pursuing. joe -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [baavss-alert] Lanning 420 in Outburst Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:00:45 -0000 From: SteveB Reply-To: baavss-alert at yahoogroups.com To: baavss-alert at yahoogroups.com Lanning 420, classified as variable type n:, has brightened from ~ 19 mag to 16 and is now showing signs of superhumps. Lanning 420 was last observed in outburst on July 26, 2007 where it was rabidly declining at a rate of .3 mag/hour with no visible superhumps. I would be interested in receiving any time series data during this outburst period. The object is well placed in Cepheus for Northern observers at: 22 01 04.04 +58 48 48.4 Clear skies, Steve Brady BXS __._,_.___ Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Recent Activity: * New Members 1 * New Files 4 Visit Your Group -------------------------------------------- Visit the BAA Variable Star Section web site at... http://www.britastro.org/vss/ -------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Switch to: Text-Only , Daily Digest ? Unsubscribe ? Terms of Use . __,_._,___