(cba:news) stars for march-april

[Joe Patterson]

Dear CBAers,

Thanks for all the data in recent weeks.  I'm back to teaching now... so 
the analysis will wait a few weeks (with one exception).

That exception is V1674 Her.  All northerners can get a 2-hour run, even 
without violating the "2 airmass" rule-of-thumb.  But you can cheat the 
rule a tad, because the main target now is the behavior of the 8.3 
minute periodicity.  It's of quite high amplitude now (~0.05 mag), so a 
2-hour run will give a quite precise timing.  A very high priority.  The 
paper from 2021 has been waiting for the new data - to define the period 
change adequately.  I was very surprised to see so fast a period change 
last year - but now we need 2022 data to nail it precisely.

Of course it would also be nice to tune up the *orbital* ephemeris. 
That will probably take April data, as well as March.

We continue in our emphasis on novae.  Good targets now are: V407 Lup 
(especially), V1369 Cen, NR TrA, and IM Nor.  Plus T Pyx, for the rest 
of March - then we say our annual goodbye to our great friend!

EX Hya, BG CMi, and HT Cam are excellent targets among the dwarf novae 
and novalikes.

Then there's DQ Her. Analysis is tough this early in the season (i.e. 
with short runs).  Really a May-June target.

But AM CVn is very timely, and will remain so for a few weeks, maybe me 
(and maybe a lot more).

Columbia U went back to normal life this week - hallelujah!  I hope 
you're all well, and ready to rekindle your pre-pandemic life this month!

joe
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