More then a little speculative! But until the first long, flat light curve shows up, I'll indulge my fantasy. There is, you see, this "controversy" now over whether VY Scl stars become very luminous supersoft X-ray sources at quiescence. Personally I think it's merely the result of one bad paper, which attracted much attention and was cited approvingly many times... but the existence of a reflection effect (off the orbiting secondary) allows one to MEASURE the bolometric luminosity of the WD (and, I expect, put the silly business to rest).
BTW just to add to Jerry's note on the SAS conference at Big Bear: I have most of May reserved on the 1.3 m MDM telescope (on Kitt Peak),and a week on the 2.4 m at the end. We'd especially love to have good foreign representation at Big Bear, so I'll sweeten the deal for the internationals by adding a few nights of observing at Kitt Peak. We won't let you look for the Easter bunny... but other than that, you can use the telescope any way you want (pretty pictures as well as CVs). No telescope operators, authority figures, similar intrusions to get in the way. Decent living quarters, so you can likely stay there. I hope that'll lure some extra internationals. If you time your visit with my travel schedule, you can probably add the extra travel leg at no cost (I'll rent a van to travel Tucson->Big Bear and back).
These SAS meetings - especially if you also attend the consecutively scheduled Riverside ATM conference a few miles away - remind me of my first visit to Toyland a few weeks before Christmas. American Astronomical Society meetings are pretty similar, though there's not a lot of toys to buy (unless you have tends of millions of USD). One of those is scheduled for Boston in May 2011; I believe that one coincides with a AAVSO meeting, and will include a special session on professional-amateur collaboration. We'll invade that conference too.
joe Jerry Foote wrote:
Tom, I am measuring it at 18.8. The clouds have cleared here so I will stay on it until 12:30 UT. Running in Clear 2x2 binning and 90 sec on the 24". Mike, thanks for the AAVSO chart link. Jerry Foote Center for Backyard Astrophysics-Utah jfoote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx____________________________________________________________ Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA) mailing lists https://cbastro.org/communications/mailing-lists/