(cba:news) holy mackerel! (Joe Patterson) [2011-02-07T23:06:46Z]

According to Jeremy Shears - pretty good authority! - SDSS 1339+48 is at 
magnitude 10.4.  Stop reading this message and fire up a time series.

This star is called "UMa" in the Downes catalogue, and is located at 13h 
39m 41.12s +48d 47m 27.5s.  We have tons of great data on the star in 
quiescence - and have just been waiting for an outburst.  I figured 
about a 30 year wait, and it's only been 4.  As the Green Bay Packers 
discovered last night, sometimes you get lucky.

Within about 2 days we should know if it's a super, though at 10.4 it's 
likely.  A superb post-midnight northern object... good for chat re 
coverage, though some redundancy of coverage is quite desirable in the 
very early stages (partly for calibration, and partly to provide some 
insurance against clouds, equipment failures, etc.).

This star trumps the targets I wrote about earlier today.  Wow.  If you 
have a V filter, I recommend using it while the star is bright (assuming 
a suitably bright comp star is around).  If you don't (and  also even if 
you do), be careful about saturation.  If you are close to saturation, 
try shorter exposures or de-focus.  If you find a particularly good comp 
star, tell all of us.

Likely the best outburst since GW Lib in 2007 - or even better, since 
it's the first ever seen for Mister UMa.  And speaking of GW Lib, we'll 
be submitting that paper (reporting 1258 hours of 2007-2008-2010 
photometry) tonight or tomorrow.  Finally.  We'll send it to all 14 
co-authors tomorrow; if you don't get it and your spam is not too 
aggressive, it probably means I don't have your correct email address.

Leapin' lizards!

joe