Special Notice #246: Continued Monitoring of epsilon Aurigae

August 8, 2011: The bright star epsilon Aurigae has emerged from its most recent eclipse that began in August, 2009. A BVRIJH light curve for the last 365 days of the eclipse can be viewed at the following URL.

http://tinyurl.com/epsaur

Even though the main eclipse may be over, we still need your observations for at least the rest of this year in order to more precisely define 4th contact, and to characterize the magnitude of out of eclipse variations (~0.1 mag in V).   Information on the latter will be helpful in comparison with planned post-eclipse observations with both the CHARA Array MIRC imager (with their new 6 telescope mode) and the IRTF SpeX infrared instrument.

We request at least one observation of epsilon Aurigae every other week at least until the end of 2011. Photometric observations in all major bandpasses (UBVRIJH) are especially requested.

A visual observing chart for epsilon Aurigae is located here:

http://www.aavso.org/sites/default/files/epsaur-chart.png

Epsilon Aurigae is a bright star well suited for DSLR photometry. A DSLR photometry tutorial is available at the following URL:

http://www.citizensky.org/content/dslr-documentation-and-reduction

As always, all AAVSO data is available to the public free-of-charge and updated in real-time at the following URL:

http://www.aavso.org/data-access

This AAVSO Special Notice was prepared by A. Price and R. Stencel.

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