(cba:news) 2021meetings... and WX Pyx

[Joe Patterson]

Hi CBAers,

Thanks, Gordon and Bob, for that info re the 2021 SAS and AAVSO 
meetings.  I certainly plan to attend both... and Bob, it would be good 
to have a breakout session for CBAers at the SAS meeting.  Good chance 
for us all to meet, and for me to hear from you how I can support our 
common enterprise + you personally.  I get a lot of benefit from all 
that data (the NSF loves citizen science)... so lemme know how I can 
support you.

WX Pyx is well placed now in the evening sky.  Much better in the south, 
of course, but the periodic signals are quite strong and the star is a 
suitable target anywhere south of roughly +42 deg.  In particular, we 
could approach round-the-world coverage if we had runs in the western 
USA.  (I'm hoping Gordon and Peter will keep the vigil in Australia, 
too.)  And you can slightly stretch our usual "2.0 airmass" rule - since 
it's *difference* in airmass that hurts, and this star never gets high 
for USA latitudes.***

joe

*** BTW you might ask "why not CORRECT for airmass?".  Since I'm a huge 
fan of long runs, I've experimented a lot with this.  On rare occasions 
I do; an extra (differential) extinction of ~0.1 mag/airmass works 
reasonably for the average CV and the average comp star.  But if you get 
it wrong, then you've basically inserted a periodic signal into the 
data.  So, on the principle "keepen das hands off das blinkenlights", I 
prefer not to mess around with that.
"

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