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Topic: M31N 2008-12a call to arms.
It is that time of year again. A recurrent nova in M31 is due to go off again. This one has by far the shortest recurrence period known at about 1 year. I have been looking out for it for quite a while but it has never shown up when I am in La Palma. If you subscribe to 12a_Monitoring@googlegroups.com you will have seen the material below. If not, and you can image down to mag 18 or so in a reasonable time (meaning you have a 20cm telescope or larger) please consider subscribing. My http://www.astropalma.com/Projects/VS/M31N_2008-12a.html provides more information and a link to a finder chart.
Thanks, Paul
Dear colleagues,Another year ticked off (almost)! As always, I hope you are all keeping well at this time!
Traditionally, this is an e-mail I’ve send around the start of September – this year, I am purposely sending it later as we are working toward a smaller potential eruption window. I know many of you have already been observing 12a regularly – so thanks for that!
This email is to let you all know that, yet again, we have officially restarted our ground-based optical monitoring of the remarkable M31 recurrent nova M31N 2008-12a with the aim to detect the 2023 eruption. As always, I want to extend our thanks to those of you who have already been observing over the last weeks and I want to encourage everyone to join the monitoring effort once again.
We have again secured several very early time spectroscopic observations of the 2023 eruption that require early notification of the 2023 eruption for triggering. This again includes time on the Liverpool Telescope. Our aim with these follow-up observations remains to probe the early-time physics that drive the eruption and an attempt to definitively determine the ultimate fate of M31N 2008-12a – whether one day it will explode as a Type Ia supernova or collapse to a neutron star. Your continued involvement in this project is key to all these aims! Each year we manage to get on target faster and faster, we are hoping that the heavens (and weather) align this year to start our follow-up observations within an hour of the eruption occurring – it’s ambitious, but in theory we can do it!
Last year, although we had an early detection of the eruption of 12a (https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=15786) and rapid spectroscopic follow-up (https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=15788), unfortunately, the geography at the time of eruption meant that we discovered the event just too late to meet the early spectroscopic goals. The LT is setup to automatically trigger spectroscopic observations of 12a as soon as we receive a report of an eruption – stopping any on-going observations at the time, we have ‘ultimate priority’ for these observations! Indeed, we have automated the whole process should the LT be the first telescope to detect the 2023 eruption!
As in previous years, below I outline in detail the monitoring and reporting structure, as well as the notifications in case of a discovery. This strategy is the same as recent years. Please follow the precise instructions because, for instance, some of us have set up email alerts based on the email subject of the discovery notification.
In previous years, the Liverpool Telescope has been a regular source of additional eruption monitoring observations but has only been the first telescope to detect three of the fifteen consecutive eruptions (2014, 2018, and 2020). Out of interest, of those 15 eruptions 8 have been detected by members of this group (the other 7 by facilities such as PTF, LT, and LCO)!
We will still be using the mailing list 12a_Monitoring@googlegroups.com for the communication within the collaboration. The finding chart and reference stars remain the same as for the previous eruption. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me at M.J.Darnley@ljmu.ac.uk and I will provide clarification. Please note that the “12a” mailing list is reserved for discussions about this nova.
I hope that all of you will join again for another exciting season of watching the most remarkable nova go into eruption. Please let me know in case you will not be able to participate in this year’s campaign.
Best regards and clear skies,
Matt for the 12a Collaboration
1) The eruption date prediction
Based on an updated analysis, we expect the 2023 eruption of 12a will take place in December 2023, with the window possibly extending into early January 2024.
2) Who is coordinating
Mike Healy (M.W.Healy@ljmu.ac.uk) and I (M.J.Darnley@ljmu.ac.uk) will be coordinating the observations, but also involved and very interested will be: Allen Shafter (awshafter@gmail.com).
3) Communication strategy
For the communication within the collaboration we will use exclusively the mailing list 12a_Monitoring@googlegroups.com. The usage of the list should be restricted to notifications of (potential) discoveries, status updates from the coordinators, requests for confirmation, and urgent queries. This will reduce the email traffic for all of us. In case of non-urgent/minor questions or updates please contact me (M.J.Darnley@ljmu.ac.uk) directly.
4) Where to report upper limits and photometry?
We encourage all of you to report your upper limits to the AAVSO database, whether you are an AAVSO member or not. We have established the AAVSO database as central data collection hub for this project. We will be checking your reported upper limits frequently. Here is information on how to submit data to the AAVSO, courtesy of (former) AAVSO director Stella Kafka:
Information on how to get an AAVSO observer code and submit your data directly to the AAVSO database: To do so, you need to create an account here: https://www.aavso.org/join-aavso(under “Click Here to Join the AAVSO”).
Once you register, please request an observer code.
Please note that you don’t need to be members to get an observer code and submit data (although it would be great if everyone becomes an AAVSO member and supports the association). Observer codes are unique and help us give credit to observers who acquire observations and diagnose problems with discrepant data when needed.
In case of further questions about the AAVSO data base please contact me (M.J.Darnley@ljmu.ac.uk) or the AAVSO directly.
5) What do we need for a discovery?
To discover the eruption and notify the collaboration, you only need a reliable detection. Ideally, the nova should be clearly detected in more than one exposure. Photometry is useful, but can be done later, because we need to react fast. We are relying on your expertise and judgement about whether a detection is real. If in doubt, follow point 7 below.
Please find attached a finding chart of the nova. The finder chart image is an exceptionally deep exposure taken by the 2m Liverpool Telescope through a Sloan r’ filter, the median seeing of the 21 images combined here was around 1 arcsecond.
6) Discovery notification
If you are successful in discovering the eruption, please notify the collaboration immediately through the mailing list: 12a_Monitoring@googlegroups.com
This should be the first thing you do. CBAT entries or ATels can wait until after this (short) email. Remember that the nova is evolving fast and that we need to be very quick (particularly in triggering the follow-up observations).
Here is a template for the discovery notification. Please attach a discovery image for your stacked data and for at least 2 individual exposures. Ideally, we need a .fits file but if it speeds up the notification then a .jpg screenshot is fine.
If you can immediately provide photometry, then please do so. Otherwise send this email without photometry but start working on the photometry after sending. We will get back to you very quickly.
——————————————–
subject:
——–
M31N 2008-12a – 2023 eruption discovered!
text:
——–
Dear colleagues,
The 2023 eruption has been discovered. Please try to increase your observing cadence to monitor the light curve.
The nova was discovered on <date and time> with a magnitude of <mag> at the <observatory>. Discovery images are attached.
——————————————-
7) If you are not sure
If you are not sure whether you have discovered the nova, please contact the mailing list (12a_Monitoring@googlegroups.com) to request a confirmation. Attach your discovery image(s) and include (preliminary) photometry as well as the location of your observatory.
This scenario is meant for low signal/noise detections at the nova position. If in doubt, please send this email. We’d rather have a few false positives then missing the early stages of an eruption.
——————————————-subject:
———
M31N 2008-12a – possible 2023 detection; requesting confirmation
text:
———
Dear colleagues,
I found a possible detection of the nova on <date and time> with a magnitude of about <mag> at the <observatory>. Discovery images are attached. Please try to confirm this detection.
——————————————-
8) Announcement and publication
The aim is to announce the discovery in an ATel as soon as possible. All photometry will also be included in a comprehensive publication in a refereed journal.
If you discover the eruption, and after notifying the collaboration, you can publish the ATel yourself or send your discovery information to the following people, one of which will publish the ATel as quickly as possible:
If you choose to send the ATel yourself, below is a template that you can use (including some html code in the first paragraph that you can just copy and paste). See also the ATel on the 2017—2021 eruptions:
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=11116
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=12177
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13269
In reply to: Accommodation at dark sky locations for astronomy(?)
There is accommodation at E-EYE in Spain. It’s not too bad a drive from Seville.
(Disclaimer: I have a jointly run rig hosted by them – but, as a customer, I have stayed there when setting up and found it very comfortable).
In reply to: Elections to BAA Council
The possibility of me joining the Council in order to foster further debate on the matter has been suggested before but I am inherently against “single issue” candidates. One should wish to join the Council in order to further the development of the Association, not just to argue a specific point.
Yes, I would entirely agree that the issue is likely to be low down on anyone’s priority list (including mine!) but I do wonder whether the current system, with its tendency to generate pointless ballots, is in some way responsible for the low voting numbers. Some (such as myself) may not vote at all because they realise that parts of the election are un-necessary anyway and others might be put off by the way that the elections for Council members and Trustees interact, with the additional complication caused by elections whose outcome is a foregone conclusion only adding to the confusion.
And while the issue might be low-priority, surely it is such a simple thing to understand and correct that it should not need a Parliamentary Enquiry to quickly resolve?
In reply to: Elections to BAA Council
Steve, the obvious answer is for you to join the Council, debate the matter, and convince everyone else to vote a different way.
I can see you are annoyed by this, but I suspect it is VERY low down anyone else’s priority list.
James
In reply to: Gift Subscriptions
Hi Patrick,
We don’t have a way to offer gift subscriptions via the online form. However, if you contact the BAA Office at the below link they can probably help you with this.
The problem is the membership is linked to the email address used to join. That means we cannot easily do this as a future dated surprise. As soon as the Office create the membership, the person will receive the welcome email. That is also why they cannot be easily done online, as you create a membership associated with the email address you use to create the account when you join.
https://britastro.org/home/about-us/contact-us
Best wishes,
AndyIn reply to: Variable Star Section Meeting, Sept 2
I was very sorry to miss this meeting but I had a prior engagement that would have been difficult to break. I hope to join you all another time!
In reply to: Variable Star Section Meeting, Sept 2
In reply to: Subscription Renewal Options
Hi Michael,
You can see the prices for the different types of membership at this link:
https://britastro.org/join
The rate that would apply to you would be Ordinary Digital, £32.50.
To alter your membership type you can call (0207 734 4145 10am-4pm Mon-Fri) or email (office@britastro.org) the Office. They can update your renewal membership type, or you can renew to the new type over the phone. If they update your renewal membership type, then when you press the renew button in Sheep you will see your new membership type and price.
Best wishes,
AndyIn reply to: Silly but quick question
Hi Gordon,
There are no silly questions 🙂
For those who have joined in the past few years, your subscription becomes due on the day of the year you joined. For those who joined many years ago, the annual subscription always ran from 1st August to 31st July the next year.
Reminder emails are sent to every member who has provided an email address, about 95% of members. Those who have not given an email address are sent letters. The reminder emails are sent before the renewal is due, then several after payment was due if the member has not renewed.
Gordon, you can login to SheepCRM to see your renewal date. If you are not logged into the BAA website then click:
Login -> Renew Membership
If you are logged into the BAA website then:
Account -> My membership
You use the same password that you use for the BAA website but you have to login separately to SheepCRM.
I won’t give out specific details on the forum, but Gordon’s subscription is not due for a few months.
Best wishes,
Andy (BAA Systems Manager)We are now only two weeks away from the Comet Section meeting at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It looks as if there will be no train strikes that weekend and spaces are still available so, if you haven’t already registered, now is the time to do so! Full details of the event can be found at:
https://britastro.org/event/comet-section-meeting-3
The nearest station to the venue is Cutty Sark which is on the DLR. From here it is only a few minutes’ walk to the museum with entry through the gates on Romney Road. There is also a bus stop right outside the museum for services 129, 177, 188, 286, 386 and N1. The grounds around the museum will open as normal at 7am but the doors will not open until 9am. We need to be out of the museum by 6pm. Please bring your Ticket Tailor booking with you so that we can check you off at the door. If you are early there are plenty of excellent places to buy coffee or breakfast between the station and the park.
The meeting starts with an introduction in the Lecture Theatre at 9:30am followed by a walk up the hill for the special comet-themed planetarium show which will start just after 10am. If you arrive late you can meet us at the planetarium around 09:45 or join when the meeting proper starts back at the Lecture Theatre at 11am. There will be FAS and BAA representatives at the museum entrance, in the lecture theatre and at the planetarium to welcome you.
We have a lunch break scheduled from 12:45 – 13:45. No lunch is provided so bring your own and eat it in beautiful Greenwich Park (sunny weather not guaranteed). You can also get lunch from the cafe at the museum although this is likely to be very busy and we only have an hour. There are plenty of great pubs in the area but getting lunch offsite would be very challenging given the timings. I suggest you don’t try and reserve any pub visits until after the meeting!
All of the talks will be recorded and we will put them online after the event. The meeting schedule is quite tight but there will be an opportunity to ask questions and some time for discussion at the end of the meeting. This is a great opportunity to meet fellow comet enthusiasts face-to-face.
My thanks to Flamsteed Astronomy Society and the NMM for making this meeting possible and to the BAA for support with administration and finances. We currently have over 80 people booked and I’m looking forward to seeing many of you there.
…
There is a simple fix, which is to provide you with two observer codes and logins.
…
This would not be as neat a solution, as it would split your observations into two observers.This approach has worked well for me in a different context.
In the past I have been engaged in significant collaborative projects where credit was due to two or more people. Hence, for example, THL which is short for Team-Hills-Leyland. Kevin Hills took all the images and performed the astrometry. I did the photometry and uploaded the results.
AAVSO does not understand the value of team-work 😉 so all the joint results were uploaded to their database under my name — with the prior agreement of my cow-orkers of course. So, Ian, when your results wend their way over he Atlantic I am pretty sure that all will be attributed to you.
In reply to: A possible cosmological paradigm?
I agree with you Richard, thank you Paul and Paul for your replies, I just have to try and fully understand them now!
I had an enjoyable career working for Philips Research from 1973 to 2008, mainly in silicon device physics (to 1993) during the time when computing power was rapidly expanding. However, I have always had an interest in the more exotic fields of Cosmology and Quantum/Particle Physics and over the years have tried to
improve my knowledge in these areas. So now that I have completed my stellar spectroscopy project (BAA Forum topic “Spectral Line Modelling – please would somebody review the work) I think my winter project will be to try once again to improve my cosmological knowledge.In the past I have tried to work my way through quite a few books on GR (getting a little further each time) more recently I have worked through the “Theoretical Minimum” books by Lenoard Susskind and got to chapter 10 (before running out of steam!) of “Quantum Field Theory for the gifted amateur” by Tom Lancaster & Stephen j. Blundell, I have also bought “Covariant Physics” by Moataz H. Emam. It’s difficult working alone so would anybody like to join me in studying these books? Are there better books?
One last comment on this topic and I appologise if it sounds a bit mystical, but I don’t think we will get a “theory of everything” until we can fit “free will” or at least the illusion of free will into the picture something that I thought might be possible with my suggestion of a variable Planck “Constant”.
In reply to: Bob Mizon
David – What a tale! – I know that windy road well but had not realised that you and Bob were joint partners in crime over there. very nice. If only Bob were here to give his side of the story!
In 2019 I acquired a car full of books from the late Peter Richards-Jones, in my role as Librarian for the Society for the History of Astronomy. Many of the books have joined the Library and others have been sold on. Amongst the books, were a couple of boxes of old slides and film reels of various formats from the 1950s onwards. Earlier this year I finally got around to sorting through these boxes. After consulting with a number of people, I decided I would have to study the films in case there was anything of astronomical significance. I purchased a second hand projector from the 1970s which could play Super8 and regular 8 film, and once I’d worked out how to use, projected the films onto my dining room wall and watched them. Most were family videos of holidays abroad, and using my DSLR camera I recorded video of the film being projected on a white wall. I have since sent these digital copies to the son of Peter who is overjoyed to see the footage he has never seen before of his family and of himself from the 1960s and 1970s. There were several films of the Moon and of the Sun in eclipse, but there were also three films of historic importance. The first is a film showing what I believe is the construction of a building at Ewell Observatory; I’ve messaged them but no reply yet. The second is a 10 minute long film of the 1973 eclipse of the Sun as viewed from the Monte Umbe – the last 30 seconds or so of the video show people onboard and once I’ve edited the eclipse I will share this. The third is a 3 minute video of a Winchester Weekend at King Alfred’s College in Winchester. There is no date, but with the help of Richard McKim and Martin Mobberley we are pretty sure it is the 1972 Winchester Weekend, held in July 1972. The write up of this meeting by Charles Wise and the accompanying group photograph is posted here and taken from JBAA 1972, 82, 6, pages 440-441. I showed the video at the Winchester Weekend just and promised to share it on the BAA Forum. We are keen to know if anyone was at this meeting and would love to know who the people are who appear in the video. It would also be valuable for the BAA Archives if others had videos of past Winchester Weekends, or other BAA events from the past. There is no sound to this film.
In reply to: Using ASTAP for comet measurements
There’s a conversation on the ASTAP forum about adding a circle / ellipse and how to measure the sky background. Perhaps others who know more about comet photometry than me (most people!) could advise and join?
https://sourceforge.net/p/astap-program/discussion/suggestions/thread/b1c1be085c/
Han has added the option to measure inside a circle / ellipse now in the development version (right mouse drag while holding down the Ctrl key).
Thanks
MarkIn reply to: Historical Section Newsletter 27
Over the last few years I have been imaging asteroids named for people I follow Twitter and then tweeting the results.
I encourage others to join me in imaging asteroids named after (ex-)BAA members who have been likewise honoured. Over time we should be able to complete a comprehensive gallery.
If anyone is at least remotely interested I could add the ones already taken to my personal gallery.
Topic: Evening Stars
Jupiter and Venus are in the evening sky just now and on this evening (2023 February 22) they were joined by our Moon. Image captured at 18:00UT with Jupiter at upper left and Venus at lower right, simply using an iPhone.
Over the next week the planets will appear to move toward each other until being only 0.5 degrees (Moon’s apparent diameter) apart on March 2.
Attachments:
The people of the world come from a variety of social, educational, and cultural backgrounds. This means that even though they are looking up at exactly the same stars that you are, they see different patterns than you. Even within your own culture there will be differences. People have used the sky as:
• A calendar, and/or
• A divination system, and/or
• A navigational tool, and/or
• A weather prediction system, and/or
• A place to honor:
o Their deities
o Their ancestors, or
o Their culture.
This is a practice that continues to this day.
This World Asterisms Project is a living project started in June 2021 by the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada as a celebration of the sky cultures of the world: It continues to grow as the process of naming the stars above is an ongoing process. It is also growing as ethnoastronomers and researchers investigate old records and interview elders and recover previously lost sky cultures. The World Asterisms Project has so far examined over 481 of the world’s cultures and recorded 11,326 asterisms including 1,322 telescopic and 428 names of the Milky Way. We have separate lists for names of the Sun, Moon, and Planets from various cultures: 1,567 so far.
We are stewards of these records and are using the “Two Eyes Seeing” approach pioneered by members of our Halifax Centre of the RASC in their ongoing partnership with the Mi’kmaq people to recover their sky lore: the shared perspectives of astronomers and knowledge keepers. We are doing our best to avoid exonyms and use the names these people use for themselves. We are identifying the asterisms here and whenever possible directing people to representatives of the cultures involved for information on the sky stories or dream lines related to those asterisms.
This project has six parts which you can download for free:
Volume One is the World Asterism Project Handbook that lists the more than 11,000 asterisms alphabetically by subject so that you can see how these subjects cross cultures. Whenever possible we describe the star patterns in detail, describe the history behind it when we can, list all the variations in spelling that we have encountered, and list all the names and spelling in the language of the people when possible. We identify the people who first recorded or named these asterisms when possible.
Volume Two is the World Asterisms Project List which lists the more than 11,000 asterisms with their exact location in the sky (right ascension and declination) with some basic notes on the stars involved. This is provided in both PDF and Excel format so that you can search the lists and create your own lists.
Volume Three is the World Asterisms Project Sky Cultures Resource List which identifies all the sky cultures that we’ve examined, gives their location in the world, and lists all resources available which can be used to learn more about them.
Volume Four is the World Asterisms Project Milky Way Names list.
Volume Five is the World Asterisms Project Solar System Objects Handbook describing the names of the Sun Moon, and Planets.
Volume Six is the World Asterisms Project Solar System Objects List.
You can download these for free here: https://rasc.ca/world-asterism-project
We are making this free to facilitate access for researchers, students, and educators.
This is a work in progress as we add new discoveries and update current ones. We periodically update these volumes on our website as they continue to grow. We have also created a World Asterisms Project Google Drive for researchers involved in this project as partners and supporters. In this drive we keep the current drafts, shared asterism files, and a “new” page which describes current work.
We are reaching out to the people of the world: If you have information on your sky culture to share, please share it with us. If you are interested in joining our team, contact us and we can add you to the researchers who have access to those lists. If you have any questions, suggestions, or corrections, please contact us and we’d be happy to assist you. This information is being provided free to all, but we encourage you to donate to the RASC to support our work.When I heard about UK Spaceports I envisioned mini versions of the Kennedy Launch Complex. I believe that the Scottish spaceports will be vertical launches, whereas the Cornwall spaceport will release a rocket from under the wing of a 747 aircraft. These first launchers are for putting CubeSats and similar small payloads into Earth orbit, joining the growing number of launch service providers.
It’s good if this provides training and careers for UK engineers and scientists, although we’ll have to rely on NASA, SpaceX, ESA, et al for mainstream heavy lifting to the ISS, the Moon and deep space.
A recent manned flight to the edge of space was investigated by the FAA as to whether it deviated from its approved flightpath. Let’s hope we don’t start dropping any debris onto our friends in France, Portugal, Norway…
Alex.
In reply to: Partial solar eclipse of 2022 October 25
And hello to Duncan again!
I didn’t have my BAA Handbook at hand when typing my previous replies last last night but now I have I can perhaps shed some light on the eclipse diagram to which you refer.
Diagrams such as these are taken from the NASA eclipses website rather than being generated by the BAA, and there is an explanatory page about them at https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplotkey.html which might help you. It is, unfortunately, worded in very technical terms but the last part should help you understand the various numbers and times around the map. But basically the blue lines are lines of equal eclipse magnitude and the green lines join places where maximum eclipse for that place occurs at the same time. A larger and clearer version of the magnitude/time plot for the UK appears on page 273 of the current version of the Journal, where the text clearly says that the numbers are magnitudes rather than obscurations.
Hope that helps!
British Astronomical Association
Supporting amateur astronomers since 1890
