EC14012 Paper and DAMP05 Update

Hello everyone,

Good news!  The EC14012 paper is now available on astro-ph.  Here is
the link:  http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.2558.pdf.
The paper will be coming out in the June edition of ApJ.

DAMP05 has started.  We've been observing GD165 to evaluate the star
for convective light curve fitting.  This is a
hot DA, and would help pin down the hot end of our convection plot
(Figure 17 in the EC14012 paper) where we only have G117-B15A
right now.  The star still has 2 major frequencies, at 120 and 193 s.
Both are mulitplets.  The 120 s multiplet seems very similar to
the previous published frequencies, but the 193 s multiplet is not yet
resolved!  Of course, we need more data!  Check out
the website to see the latest light curves and FTs.

Cheers,
Judi

News from the Director

Hello everyone,

The website is up for DAMP05 at
http://darc.physics.udel.edu/wet/damp05/phptools/index.php.  We are
still confirming a few sites, but it looks like things will start next
week and run until the beginning of May.  This is going to be a small
run to evaluate GD165 and its potential for light curve fitting.  The
secondary target is GD358 because it is fairly bright and  doesn't
need lots of coverage.  Unless of course, it changes this year:)  The
finder charts and observing instructions are available on the website.
 The information for uploading data to daedalus is the same as in the
past.  If anyone needs a reminder, let me know.

Two other bits of news:

Happily, the EC14012-1446 paper has been accepted for publication in
the Astrophysical Journal (tentatively for the June 10 edition).  It
should appear on astro-ph in a few days.  This
is very exciting.  The paper presents the FT and light curve fitting
for EC14012-1446, and raises some other interesting questions.  I hope
everyone will take a look.

Planning for the 8th Whole Earth Telescope Workshop is proceeding.  We
have been discussing a format which is more in line with the
"traditional" workshop.  We would spend a good deal
of the meeting focusing on a single star, with the idea of leaving
with the framework for a publication.  The suggested "focus" star is
G29-38, since it has a comprehensive, extensive data set of
photometry and spectroscopy and it impacts a broad range of fields,
from pulsation to disks. This part of the workshop would be open
discussion, focusing on the entire data set to address
questions of interest.  I think this sounds very exciting.  Please let
me know if you have any suggestions.

Cheers,
Judi

Delaware Military Academy

On March 27 I went to the Delaware Military Academy to talk to the
seniors and juniors about possible careers in astronomy.  I talked
to four separate classes.  They were all very interested and asked
lots of questions.  I need to brush up on my black hole theory!
Also had lots of questions about Jupiter and Venus, which are very
easy to see after sunset.

New Supernova

I heard about a new supernova that appeared in M95 around
March 16. It was a Type II supernova, which
is a massive star that has exploded. This galaxy is 37 million light
years away. It was sort of clear tonight for my observational
astronomy class from the University, so we used the 24 inch telescope
to capture this image of M95.
The arrow points to the supernova. It was sort of hazy, and M95 was
right above Wilmington, so the sky is kind of
rough. The other picture is an older image I found of M95 before the supernova.

Type II supernova

m95 old image

m95 color2

Future Astronomers

March 13 - James and I went to West Park Place school to do a star
party for the 4th grade classes.  James borrowed 4 portable Celestron
telescopes from the University.  The night was pretty clear and
quite warm. Jupiter, Venus and Mars were all easy to find.  There
were about 30 kids (plus quite a few parents:) there.  They all
had a great time looking through the telescopes.  Everyone loved
Jupiter with its moons, and you could see the polar cap on Mars.