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(cba:news) HZ Puppis and friends (Joe Patterson) [2014-01-13T18:14:13Z]


Dear CBAers,

We have found stable 21 minute oscillations in the light curve of the old nova HZ Puppis (1963). This had been reported by Abbott and Shafter a long time ago (1997), but never studied again or verified - even by them. Abbott and Shafter are extraordinarily reliable observers... but it was just a conference proceeding, and such things are usually preliminary reports, which are followed by proper scientific papers. No paper followed, by them or anyone else. And being a northern guy, there wasn't a lot of chance for me to follow up. Then we did, a few days ago - and there it was: beautiful 21 min oscillations, just as advertised.

So far our data is only from Kitt Peak, and we desperately need coverage from other longitudes. With dec=-28 we can't stay on the star very long, so aliasing is rather severe. This is all the more so because the orbital signal is very weak in this star.

The star is around V=17.2. Easy for us with a 2.4 m, but the oscillations are usually pretty strong, and our main reliance on off-longitude data is alias rejection. So long runs at other longitudes would be wonderful!

There's a lot of competition from other southern novae in the Jan-Feb sky. Namely T Pyx, CP Pup, and V382 Vel. I *think* we're done with CP Pup. It's the most mysterious and complex of all CV light curves I've ever seen... and normally I'd be begging for more data. But I can't imagine getting coverage any better than we had in 2012 and 2013 - so for the moment, it's off the menu, and I have a big homework assignment. T Pyx is definitely on the menu, and probably V382 Vel (though more on that in a few days).

Let me know if you manage to obtain a good long time series on HZ Pup. This will affect our priorities in the 2.4 m run, since alias-breaking is aided by the *proximity* of data at different longitudes. Thanks!

joe p
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