Invitation AZ Cas Campaign

Dear Colleagues,

You are invited to participate in a new eclipsing binary star system campaign. Cezary Galan has asked for help with both photometric and spectroscopic observations of the AZ Cas eclipse. 

The period is ~9.3 years and the eclipse lasts nearly 4 months. The star is high in the northern sky (Dec +61 degrees) so it should be observable near year around.

The eclipse campaign started in June 2012 and will end around August 2014. First contact is estimated mid-November 2012. Photometry and spectroscopy is requested. Photometrically the biggest magnitude changes are in the shorter wavelengths U (1.5 Mag change) and B (0.6 mag change) bands. Out-of-eclipse V magnitude is 9.3.

					RA   (2000.0): 014216.45
Dec. (2000.0): +612516.5
Type         : EA/GS
Mag. max     : 9.22
Mag. min     : 9.52
Mag. system  : V
Epoch (JD)   : 42689
Period (day) : 3402
D            : 03
Spec.        : F8-M0eIb+B0-B1V

For spectroscopy, at V= 9 magnitude, modest sized telescopes will be too small for high resolution work. Lower resolution, particularly those with Lisa spectrographs, should be able to image the star system. 

One paper on spectroscopy can be found at

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1957PASP...69...79S/0000079.000.html [1]

A more thorough search may show more information and papers. See the original message below.

Jeff

Hopkins Phoenix Observatory

(187283)

Counting Photons

Phoenix, Arizona USA

www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html [2]

http://www.hposoft.com/SB/SpectroBook.htm [3]

2012 ASP Amateur Achievement Award 

On Jul 6, 2012, at 6:16 AM, Cezary Galan wrote:

We would like to organize an international campaign to observe of the AZ Cas eclipse and periastron passage of 2012-2014.  The details about the campaign are in IBVS:

http://www.konkoly.hu/cgi-bin/IBVS?6027 [4]

and at the web page:

http://www.astri.uni.torun.pl/~cgalan/AZCas/ [5]

The campaign will be similarly long-term as of yours, dedicated to epsilon Aurigae. It will be some easier for CCD photometry but simultaneously much more difficult for spectroscopy, because AZ Cas is for about 6 mag fainter than epsilon Aurigae. If you are interested to participate you are welcome.

By the way, I would like to ask you for one favor. Could you forward this e-mail to the members of your campaign as the form of short invitation for them to participate in our campaign.

Kind regards,
Cezary Galan