Yes, T Pyx doesn't seem to need a lot of attention now. Gordon sent in a beautiful run from Siding Spring, which in my mind clinched the main points: the light curve has returned to its precise pre-eruption shape and period (actually 0.01% longer).
V959 Mon is a very good one for attention. Last year, Josch, Tom, and Mark Wagner nailed down the period: near 7 hours. But orbital light curves (not periods, but light curve shapes) change rapidly over the first few years - certainly as a result of the nova's evolution, and possibly as a result of the white dwarf's declining temperature/luminosity. Thus the orbital wave's amplitude in energy units *might* serve as a bolometer for the white-dwarf luminosity (which is not directly observable, because it lies in the unobservable EUV).
HZ Pup really fascinated me, because the light curve and fast period seem to be pretty much "standard issue" for intermediate polars... which implies that accretion is likely channeled by white-dwarf magnetism (assuming the signal is very stable, which it is, so far). Thus it could be a pretty good laboratory for how novae are affected by magnetism. In my opinion, only one other such star is known, V1500 Cyg. As some of you know, there's a lot of enthusiasm out there for magnetic novae (led by Brad Schaefer and Marina Orio, and the full list is long); but to me the evidence seems very weak, practically nonexistent except for V1500 Cyg. So I'm delighted to find (seemingly) another... and it raises a host of interesting questions: what else does the magnetism do, aside from steer accretion at quiescence? affect the nova explosion itself? steer outflowing gas? and so on. Our data can only probe a few such questions, but it's absolutely critical to the main question - how solid is the demonstration of that fast stable signal which is thought to be the hallmark of magnetism?
I concur that continuous monitoring is the way to go, because the period is fast (and flickering is even faster). So among the Chile telescopes, Arto's is the preferred setup. But V959 Mon is quite a *good* target for your telescope, Josch, because the light curve seems to have a fairly smooth shape - not a lot of fast activity. Thus 5-minute sampling might be just fine.
AQ Men is not a known nova, but somewhat unique because it seems to have an eclipse which comes and goes. This might be due, e.g., to a precessing disk which changes its orientation with respect to us on a timescale of a few days (around 4). Not proven, but pretty interesting. Considering its dec, I hoped that it could be a great round-the-world star. Unfortunately, nearly all of the year's coverage *so far* comes from Josch, and this is awkward because it's hard to evaluate the data at lower time resolution without much fast photometry to compare it to.
So I earnestly hope for more AQ Men data from other longitudes... and am agnostic about whether AQ Men or V959 Mon is the better choice for your telescope, Josch. I guess that makes me both greedy and indecisive.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. joe On 1/14/2014 3:24 AM, m31@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Then it is maybe better Arto concentrating on time series of HZ Pup then me. I do cycling between several stars and hence will not get too dense observations. Though I could change if needed. Arto is also correct that presently the weather in San Pedro is on the deteriorating side probably until end of February. So I stick to AQ Men then until further notice. Regards, Josch ----- Original Message ----- From: "Arto Oksanen" <arto.oksanen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: cba-chat@xxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 9:04:45 AM Subject: Re: (cba:chat) (cba:news) HZ Puppis and V959 Mon Hi Joe and Josch! I can do some long high time resolution runs of HZ Pup from Chile if desired. A short test run of HZ is in progress right now. I have done just a few runs per month of T Pyx during the last months. The star is behaving well as Joe commented and this is the time of year when the weather is not as good as usual in Atacama. arto 2014/1/14 <m31@xxxxxxxxxx>Hi Joe, what about stopping of AQ Men? Are you interested in data on HZ Pup from Chile, too? The present full moon is of course challenging with mag 17 and below. I did not do T Pyx as I know that Arto is normally following this star and his location is just 20m from mine. Actually together with Tom K. we observed N Mon 2012 during several nights to get the period of 7h. An ATEL (4803) was published about this. Data can be made available to you if of interest. I am following N Mon 2012 since its eruption with snapshots until today. Also all of those data could be made available. Anyway all data have been submitted to the AAVSO. Regards, Josch ----- Original Message -----
We have found stable 21 minute oscillations in the light curve of theold 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 needcoverage 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 theoscillations 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-Febsky. 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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