March 15, 2018: Evan A. Rich (Ph.D. candidate, University of Oklahoma), and Drs. John Wisniewski (University of Oklahoma), John Tobin (University of Oklahoma), Carol Grady (Goddard Space Flight Center), and Mike Sitko (University of Cincinnati) have requested AAVSO assistance in monitoring the bright (6.9 V) Young Stellar Object NSV 24045 (HD 163296) from now through September 2018.
This Alert Notice has been edited to correct a typographical error, and to correct the statement that the LMC was not well placed for coverage from Chile; AAVSO coverage was requested to broaden the coverage in longitude. Apologies for the errors - EOW
March 14, 2018: Dr. Frederick Walter (Stony Brook University) has requested AAVSO observers, particularly those in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, to monitor the current outburst of the recurrent nova Nova LMC 1996 = OGLE-2018-NOVA-01.
March 5, 2018: Anna Pala (Ph.D. candidate, University of Warwick) has requested AAVSO observers' assistance in monitoring the faint polar cataclysmic variable SDSS J153817.35+512338.0 in support of Hubble Space Telescope observations scheduled for late March-early April 2018.
The HST observing window is 2018 March 28 - April 9. Once the exact time of the HST observations is known, it will be announced on the AAVSO discussion forum thread for this campaign given below.
March 5, 2018: Bob Jacobs (Ph.D. candidate, Radboud University) and Drs. Samaya Nissanke (Radboud University), Jennifer Barnes (Columbia University), and Deanne Coppejans (Northwestern University) have requested AAVSO observers' assistance in monitoring the cataclysmic variables YZ Cnc, SU UMa, and CR Boo. The goal is to build good multicolor light curves of two outbursts of CR Boo and two superoutbursts each of YZ Cnc and SU UMa.
Event: Probable Nova in M31: ASASSN-18ca = PNV J00423439+4044255
Discovered independently by:
- Koichi Itagaki (Yamagata, Japan; reported via CBAT TOCP)
- All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) (reported by J. Brimacombe et al. in ATel #11275)
February 12, 2018: Dr. Koji Mukai (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and colleagues have requested AAVSO observations of the WZ Sge type dwarf nova GW Lib in support of observations with the ESA XMM-Newton spaceobservatory scheduled for