News and Announcements

January 16, 2013: Dr. Péter Ábrahám (Konkoly Observatory, Budapest, Hungary) has requested the assistance of AAVSO observers in monitoring eight young stars in Chamaeleon in support of photometry he and his colleagues will be obtaining with the VLT/ISAAC (infrared) and Herschel Space Observatory (far-infrared) during January-February 2013.

January 14, 2013: Dr. Boris Gaensicke (Warwick University), who is the coordinating PI on the large observing campaign underway to observe cataclysmic variables with the HST Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (see AAVSO Alert Notice 471 and follow-up AAVSO Special Notices as listed on the AAVSO Observing Campaigns page), is requesting observations tonight and over the next few nights of the novalike variable BB Dor.

January 10, 2013: Further to AAVSO Alert Notice 471 (http://www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-471) and AAVSO Special Notice #319 (http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-319), tonight's observations of SDSS J093249.57+472523.0 will be critical, as sometime tomorrow (January 11) the scheduling team will make the final decison about going ahead with the HST COS observations planned for

January 9, 2013: Further to AAVSO Alert Notice 454 (http://www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-454) and AAVSO Special Notices #267, #268, and #294 (http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-267, -268, -294), Dr.

January 4, 2013: Further to AAVSO Alert Notice 471 (www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-471) and AAVSO Special Notice #317 (www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-317), HST COS is scheduled to observe the U Gem-type cataclysmic variable

December 23, 2012: SN 2012hr was discovered by Peter Marples (Loganholme, QLD, Australia, Backyard Observatory Supernova Search (BOSS)) [not by Colin Drescher (Calamvale, QLD, Australia; BOSS) as originally reported in AAVSO Special Notice #318; Drescher reported Marples' discovery to CBAT as announced in CBET 3346] on 2012 December 16.53.  The object was discovered at a red magnitude of 14.8.  Subsequent spectroscopy by Milisavljevic et al. and Morrell et al.

The special epsilon Aurigae issue of the Journal of the AAVSO is published as Volume 40, Number 2.

Go to the issue's webpage: www.aavso.org/jaavso-v40n2 to view the abstracts and articles, to download the issue (members only), and to purchase printed copies (printed copies are expected to be available by the end of the month).

The following charts (listed in order by constellation) have new or revised sequences since September 28, 2012. This list is quite long and includes all the stars in the new Binocular Program. A .csv file is available as an attachment here at the bottom of the page as well.

If you observe any of these stars please update your charts as soon as possible.

December 17, 2012: The AAVSO requests enhanced nightly monitoring of the dwarf nova U Gem in support of target-of-opportunity observations with HST's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. These observations were requested by Dr.

December 11, 2012:  Further to AAVSO Alert Notice 471 (www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-471) and AAVSO Special Notice #309 (www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-309), HST COS is observing the WZ Sge-type cataclysmic variable SDSS J075507.70+143547.6 December 13-14:

            SDSS J075507.70+143547.6  13 December 2012 23:32:57 through 14 December 04:45:44 UT

I am very pleased to announce that we now have TWO Chinese translations of the AAVSO Manual for Visual Observing of Variable Stars available for downloading. The newest addition to our collection of Manual translations is in "Traditional Chinese" which is used in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and parts of southeast Asia. This beautiful translation was done by Tao Fan-Lin (陶蕃麟) who is the Director of the Taipei Association of Astronomy Now.

You can get both versions of the Chinese Manual here: