Dear CBAers,Sorry for being inaudible these past few months. The expanding-universe conference... the resumption of teaching... the setbacks to teaching inflicted by the hurricane... writing this paper... and summer-fall 2012 flew by. But led by Enrique, I think that CBA observations haven't suffered much. In another 1-2 days I'll send comments on observing targets for the next few weeks. But I wanted to get this (draft) paper off my desk and into co-authors' hands before our national holiday this week.
1. I'll send the figures for this paper later today. That might be a rather big file, so I wanted to send separately.
2. Only ~6 of you sent postal addresses when I recently asked. Most of the journals nowadays ask for emails and postal addresses of co-authors. If you didn't already, send 'em.
3. It's possible the author list is incomplete. I based it on my observing notebooks, which might be a slightly incomplete record of our observations of this star. Don't be bashful - please tell me if I've left you out.
4. Unfortunately for me - and alas, to some extent for you too - I seem to be trapped in this pattern of studying a star for 10-20 years before publishing. Papers reporting 15-20 year campaigns on two other stars (GD 552 and T Pyx) are nearly complete - and I'll send 'em when done. Since we've had ~70 refereed CBA papers, I haven't always been so sluggish! I just get awfully fascinated by a few stars, and keep wanting to see what the next season will bring... But I promise to get more into reportage, and less into epic-writing.
5. As you'll see if you read this, I've gotten seduced by this idea that CVs don't really have a true "quiescence", but are just seen in various stages of decline from nova eruptions. So I'm inclined to invest heavily in observational programs on two types of stars: (a) Recent novae. We've been decently diligent about tracking them, but should now take this to a more intense level. (b) SW Sex and ER UMa stars. Obvious candidates as unrecognized recent novae. Let the time series rip. For both types of stars, I'll send specific suggestions within a few days (or later today).
6. Please send comments/corrections, and soon. I hope to send this off to the journals in about 2 weeks.
joe
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