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WX CETI, ANOTHER GARDEN-VARIETY SUPERHUMPER
July 18-23 photometry over a 9-hr longitude range from CBA-Belgium (Tonny Vanmunster) and Cerro Tololo (Jonathan Kemp and Susan Kassin) shows conclusively that the superhump period is 85.37 +- 0.05 min. This is essentially the fourth-best period solution in the data of O'Donoghue et al. (1991 MNRAS), and illustrates well the difficulty of period-finding from a single observing site. The superhump period exceeds the orbital (spectroscopic) period by 1.7%, fairly normal for these short-Porb dwarf novae.
Other measured properties appear normal too: the star declined at a rate 0.12 mag/d, and the superhump has smoothly declined from 0.25 to 0.14 mag full amplitude.
It seems likely that the star will stay bright for a few weeks, and will provide a rare opportunity (the best ever) to study the light curve in great detail. Of special interest are:
(1) the timing of superhump maxima/minima; and
(2) the behavior of the star during and after any "dips" that may occur
in the eruption light curve.
We would be very interested in hearing from others who manage to secure observations of this star. (Or even those who don't -- there will be other stars and other nights!)
Joe Patterson jop@tristram.phys.columbia.edu Tonny Vanmunster tvanmuns@innet.be Jonathan Kemp jonathan@tristram.phys.columbia.edu Susan Kassin kassin@tristram.phys.columbia.edu
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