SU UMa – Superoutburst and Superhumps

[Mr Ian David Sharp]

Hi all,

I saw the BAA VSS alert on 3rd Dec. about SU UMa going into a superoutburst so I have been monitoring it since. It is now slowly fading from around mag 11 or so. Last night I imaged it for longer and got the attached light curve in V. I think these are superhumps? Peranso tells me the period is around 1.7 hours.

Cheers
Ian.

• This topic was modified 2 days, 5 hours ago by Mr Ian David Sharp.

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   SU-UMa-20241209.jpg
   

[Jeremy Shears]

Well it looks like humps, Ian. But they are pretty small and somewhat irregular for fully grown superhumps. It was also fading quite quickly. I hope you will get some more data.

Looking into the BAA VSS and AAVSO databases, there are fewer obs of this archetypal dwarf nova in recent years. This is a real pity, so it’s good you are following it. Occasionally it does odd things. There have been a few epochs when it stopped superoutbursting, eg 3 years in the 1980s, plus some more recent times. And in 2020 it apparently showed no outbursts at all for ~4 months.

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