(cba:news) ah men, v902 mon, and the puppis crew

[Joe Patterson]

Hi CBAers,

Time for some changes in the southern sky.

1. We can end the season on AH Men, the very bright and very southern 
novalike.  We have some nearly round-the-world coverage, and the 
dominant periods are well-defined... with the most powerful being a 
negative superhump near 3 hours.

2. Puppis is chock full of interesting novae.  The most famous is CP 
Pup; we have a lot of data from past years, and the variability is 
REALLY hard to decipher.  So just pay it a visit to see if it's straying 
from its usual magnitude near 15.5+-0.5.

3. V597 Pup.  Really interesting 2009 MNRAS paper by Warner and Woudt. 
Very likely an IP, and an orbital light curve reminiscent of T Pyx. 
Probably fainter than 18.5 and a somewhat difficult field... but have a 
look and see if it's feasible.  If so, let's make this a major target.

4. HZ Pup.  We basically worked out the ephemerides (orbit, spin) last 
year.  But the true test is whether an ephemeris can predict thousands 
of cycles later... so this is a good target for about a week of dense 
coverage (I'll analyze and call the campaign over if the ephemerides are 
good).

5. V598 Pup.  We also have very good timing data on this old nova, but 
there are so many peaks in the power spectrum - which makes for 
ambiguity.  Until further notice, this 16th mag star is a major target 
for Dec-Jan (at least)

6. V902 Mon.  Richard Sabo (Montana) has been working brilliantly on 
this recent nova, but with the equatorial location, we certainly need 
coverage from other longitudes.  BEAUTIFUL eclipsing IP.  You gotta love 
this one.

7. BT Mon.  Yet another nova... and in this case our ONLY interest is 
the deep eclipse.  The period is very close to 8 hours (0.3338139 days), 
so you may or may not have an eclipse in your observing window.  Here's 
a rough ephemeris: HJD 2,443,491.72 + 0.3338139 E.  A few 2-3 hour 
observations including eclipses will sharpen up the orbital ephemeris 
(which appears to show a surprisingly large dP/dt).

joe
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