(cba:news) CR Boo!

[Joe Patterson]

Josch Hambsch's observation revealed CR Boo at 17.5 last night.  We've 
been waiting for this!  Since it's equatorial and transiting near 
midnight, the star is pretty well placed for everyone - and it would be 
awfully nice to jump on this bashful star and obtain time series before 
it leaves this rare low state.  The relevant period is ~25 minutes, but 
there's not much known about what will show up... so probably you can 
afford longish integrations - but not too long.  Most people should 
observe unfiltered, but if you have a (relatively) big telescope and 
very good night, some filtered photometry.

And if you have any opportunity to obtain spectroscopy (on a 1+ m 
telescope), do it!  The only time we ever caught CR Boo faint, we 
obtained a super-strange spectrum - it looked like a G star with 
helium-2 emission.  That's strange enough to be a good candidate for a 
mistake; but we thought hard about it, and couldn't figure out any 
mistake we made.

We haven't been watching *extremely* closely... but for me, it's been a 
20-year wait.

joe