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Photoelectric Photometry Newsletter
W Cyg Featured in RASC Observer's Handbook Each year, Janet Mattei and John Percy write a short section in the RASC Observer's Handbook on a "Variable Star of the Year". This year 1999 (and once before) we featured W Cyg, which has shown interesting switches in period between about 130 and 235 days. So use this opportunity to check out this interesting variable (visually or photoelectrically), and this interesting publication! The 2000 Observer's Handbook will feature the interesting small-amplitude red variable RY UMa. We are beginning a reanalysis of AAVSO and APT photometry of P Cygni - the prototype of a group of ultra-luminous blue variable stars with very high rates of mass loss. It is clear, from the data, that this star shows long-term variations on a time scale of many years. Without the long datasets which can be achieved by the AAVSO, this kind of behavior would be very hard to detect. More on this in the next issue. Mr. R.W. Jones, in South Africa, continues to supply essential observations of our program stars in the southern sky. This season he reports on: SW Vir with a clear 5-month period; EV Vir, also with a five-month period; and FH Vir, which seems to vary on more than one time scale - about 50 days, and much longer. Thanks to the good work of Mr. Jones, and his colleague Fanie de Villiers, we will soon be able to do a detailed analysis of these and other southern stars.
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