Among bright novae, the name "V841 Oph" probably doesn't spring to mind immediately. That's probably because it went into outburst in 1848! This nova, discovered by the famed British observer J.R. Hind...
October 21, 2010 - 6:02pm
V854 Cen is a fine R Coronae Borealis star for southern observers, reaching binocular brightness at maximum, but diving below 14th magnitude at minimum. It entered the AAVSO observing program relatively recently (1986), but has been well-observed by southern observers since. R CrB...
October 22, 2010 - 9:18am
VW Hydri is a superb cataclysmic variable for southern observers, and belongs to the interesting subclass of dwarf novae known as SU Ursae Majoris stars, or UGSUs. The UGSUs have two different kinds of outburst behaviors: normal outbursts lasting for a few days and...
September 29, 2010 - 12:57pm
VX For is a southern member of the WZ Sge class of dwarf novae. VX For went into outburst in mid-September 2009, remaining active for around 50 days. Its outburst, like those of other WZ Sge stars, was characterized by a large amplitude, long-duration outburst of 7 magnitudes that...
December 21, 2012 - 10:05am
What on Earth is going on with WW Cet?
This star had long been catalogued as a Z Camelopardalis (Z Cam)-type dwarf novae, despite not exhibiting one of the hallmarks of the Z Cam class, the standstill between outburst and quiescence. Then within the past few years, it...
January 22, 2013 - 4:09pm
WW Vulpeculae is a young stellar variable of the UXOR or UX Orionis class. These stars are known to undergo sudden, random, and very dramatic drops in brightness of up to several magnitudes. It's believed that the fades in the UXORs are caused by obscuration by some...
September 14, 2010 - 2:14pm
WZ Sge is the prototype of an exceptional class of dwarf novae with large amplitudes, long recurrence times, low mass-transfer rates, and very short orbital periods. They're cataclysmic variables consisting of a white dwarf and a low-mass companion object locked in close orbit about...
November 7, 2012 - 10:56am
Y Lyncis is an interesting semiregular of the SRc (supergiant) subclass with an obvious long secondary period. While it has a primary pulsation period just over 100 days, there's a longer (and larger) periodicity over 1000 days. Such behavior is common among this class of...
April 21, 2011 - 3:01pm
YY Herculis is the third of the symbiotics we're showing during our three-week series on this interesting class of stars. YY Her shows symbiotic outbursts of more than two magnitudes lasting for hundreds of days, and recurring sporadically on timescales of thousands of days. ...
February 8, 2011 - 4:46pm
YZ Cnc is one of the more popular of the SU Ursae Majoris subtype dwarf novae. One of the defining characteristics of the SU UMa (or "UGSU") class is the occurrence of occasional superoutbursts that rise higher and last longer than normal outbursts that characterize all dwarf...
November 13, 2011 - 3:23pm
Z Andromedae is the class prototype of the symbiotic stars, binary stars consisting of a red giant donor star and a hot accreting star, either a white dwarf or neutron star. The most prominent features of the Z Andromedae light curve shown here are the outbursts that occur roughly every...
August 17, 2010 - 10:14am
Z CMa is a pre-main-sequence binary system composed of an embedded Herbig Be star, undergoing photometric outbursts, and a FU Orionis star. The Herbig Be component underwent the largest optical outburst in its recorded history in 2008, with another large outburst in early 2011. The origin of...
April 22, 2011 - 12:25pm
This week's Light Curve of the Week is less about the star -- the eclipsing binary Z Draconis -- than it is about this particular observer, Ed Halbach. Halbach was one of the most prolific of the AAVSO's 20th Century observers, sending us regular observations of hundreds of stars...
October 8, 2010 - 3:04pm
Z Tauri is a Mira variable with a period of 466 days, and an amplitude of about four magnitudes... or so we thought! In reality, Z Tau is a star with a nearby constant star within 10 arcseconds that most observers can't resolve. When Z Tau goes into decline and falls below...
July 3, 2012 - 10:33am
Z UMa, known formally as Z Ursae Majoris, is a semi-regular variable located in the upper left of the bowl of the Big Dipper. This star is popular since, due to its +57° declination, it is a circumpolar star for most of the population of the Northern Hemisphere....
