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Charts and sequences of the transient are now available from the AAVSO website.
The team responds to criticism of their announcement of phosphine discovery here. They say the ALMA data support PH3, but at lower concs than previously claimed. Standing by their conclusion, they call for further data.
Willmann-Bell shutting up shop is a sad development. The AIP4WIN software, which accompanies Richard Berry’s book “Astronomical Image Processing”, has been used by many people for photometry. The second edition, including AIP4WIN version 2 software, has been out of print for many years. According to Willmann-Bell, they are making a non-registered version available from their website, specifically stating “AIP4Win2.0 No Longer Requires On-line Registration”. Richard Berry comments in an AAVSO forum that it is now essentially freeware.
Yes, with ER UMa stars having very frequent outbursts, there’s always something to see, Stewart. Great fun!
Welcome Rohit! Good to see you have started a BAA Members Page, too. I look forward to seeing some of your images uploaded to that. You find some excellent examples of astro-imaging on Members Pages.
Good luck!
CUP will no longer publish amateur astronomy books. See Owen’s comments on WB and CUP on this recent thread here.
Hello Darren,
You have some excellent equipment for CCD observation of variables. For many years I too used a 100 mm refractor. For many branches of VS work you don’t need a filter, so that might be the place to start to see how you get on before buying a V filter.
This includes photometry of cataclysmic variables, such as looking for outbursts of dwarf nova. There is a thread on here about IX Dra at the moment; I use unfiltered CCD for that. Also have a look at the VSS CCD target list which was developed to provide people who are new to the field of CCD photometry of variable stars with some interesting targets to which they could turn their CCDs, whilst developing their techniques. The G filter could also be deployed if you wish. It’s close to V. The only processing you will need for photometry is the calibration you referred to.
Thanks for the update, Stewart. It’s very nice result and my thanks to our observers, too.
I must admit this is not a star that I have observed before, but I will continue to do so as it’s always up to something. I hope others will do the same as we head towards the next superoutburst.
I have a fondness for Phosphorus chemistry. Reactions of phosphorus studied during A Level chemistry resulted in the necessary attendance of the local fire brigade in the chemistry lab. Great fun!
There is an article on “A Year of Betelgeuse“ in the October edition of The AGB Newsletter:
https://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/AGBnews/issues/AGB279.pdf
Emily Levesque (U of Washington) discusses what the recent dusty dimming might mean for other red supergiants, On page 3 to 4
Corroborative evidence for phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere published today:
…another ArXiv paper on “The carbon footprint of large astronomy meetings”, compares the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society held physically in France in 2019, but online in 2020. They conclude a 3000-fold reduction in C footprint resulted. Full paper also in Nature Astronomy.
Presumably the BAA’s C footprint has also reduced, but less so since few members travel by air. Nevertheless, I am longing for the time we can meet F2F again….
The Venus/phosphine discovery team has also written a “hypothesis article” on “The Venusian Lower Atmosphere Haze as a Depot for Desiccated Microbial Life: A Proposed Life Cycle for Persistence of the Venusian Aerial Biosphere”.
It is available on ArXiv here (pdf link at top right of that page)
Although the Nature Astronomy website has the paper available to read, I find it’s a bit difficult to follow on the screen and wanted to print it. The pdf link they gave only downloads the first page and then freezes. However, I note the full 54 pages are available on ArXiv today for anyone who is interested.
The Nature Astronomy paper has just been made available as open access.
