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Alert Notice 657: HerbigAeBe stars need monitoring for Chandra observations

November 21, 2018: Dr. Hans Moritz Guenther (MIT; Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research) and colleagues have requested AAVSO observers' assistance in monitoring several HerbigAeBe stars in support of upcoming observations scheduled with Chandra.

Alert Notice 656: Chandra observation date revised for XZ Tau and HL Tau

Note: Edited November 20, 2018, to clarify the links to the forum threads for this campaign. - E. Waagen

November 7, 2018: Further to AAVSO Alert Notice 654, the date and time of the Chandra observations of the T Tauri stars XZ Tau and HL Tau scheduled for 2018 November 15 have been revised to November 11 and 12.

Dr. David Principe (MIT) informs us that Chandra is now scheduled to observe the targets on:

LPV of the Month November, 2018

S Ori

Deep Red image of S Ori from SDSS

Overview

S Ori is a Mira type Long Period Variable (LPV).  It has an Oxygen-rich spectrum range of M6.5e-M9.5e.

Its position in the sky is 05 29 00.90  -04 41 32.8 (2000), which makes it viewable from both the northern and southern hemispheres.  S Ori is a “winter” star in the northern hemisphere so it’s now in “season". 

Alert Notice 655: Anticipated secondary eclipse of b Persei by its third star in November 2018

Note: Text revised October 30 to include date and time on which the predicted eclipse window is centered. It was further revised November 2 to correct the SAO number of b Per and to correct the position of the check star. - E. O. Waagen

Alert Notice 654: XZ Tau and HL Tau monitoring needed for Chandra observations

Note: The November 15 observation with Chandra has been rescheduled to 2018 Nov. 11 17:37 - Nov. 12 00:01 UT and 2018 Nov. 12 08:01 - Nov. 12 14:27 UT. Please see AAVSO Alert Notice 656 for details. - Elizabeth O. Waagen

Alert Notice 653: Nova in Norma: N Nor 2018 = PNV J16143400-5330050

October 26, 2018

Event: Nova in Norma - N Nor 2018 = PNV J16143400-5330050

Discovered by: Robert Kaufman (Bright, Victoria, Australia)

Discovery magnitude: 10.5 (DSLR green channel, approximately visual band)

Discovery date: 2018 October 13.414 UT

Coordinates (2000.0): R.A. 16 14 32.91    Decl. -53 30 15.2   (from VSX)

Gaia plugin for VStar

Thanks to a fantastic volunteer effort by Cliff Kotnik and David Benn, we now have a plugin availble for VStar which can be used to view and plot data on variable stars directly from the Gaia website (DR 2).

To learm more about it, please see Cliff's forum post:
https://www.aavso.org/gaia-plugin-now-available-vstar

There is also documentaion on how to use this plugin (and many others) on the VStar Plugin Library webpage:
https://www.aavso.org/vstar-plugin-library#GAIA

We hope you will find this useful!