[vsnet-chat 2843] PU Her found

[Brian Skiff <bas@lowell.edu>]

     I have recovered the dwarf nova PU Herculis by examining its approximate
location on several plates in the Lowell `Pluto Camera' collection.  The object
lies near to previous candidates, but is very faint on all available sky survey
scans (POSS-I O/E and two overlapping sets of POSS-II J/F/N plates).  The star
appears at about photo-blue mag. 16 on a Lowell plate taken 1940 June 4.3 UT
(JD 2429784.8), appearing similar in brightness to the candidate marked in the
Downes & Shara atlas (1st edition).  That star is 9" east-southeast of the CV,
and has been shown to be an ordinary G dwarf by Liu et al. (1999 ApJS 122,243).
Another similarly bright star lies 7" north.  An extremely faint, red galaxy
visible on the scans of the POSS-II plates lies a few arcsec southwest of the
CV.  The equinox 2000 positions of the stars are:

PU Her     18 09 52.35  +32 00 33.0  +/- 1"
7" north   18 09 52.39  +32 00 40.1
9" ESE     18 09 52.96  +32 00 27.8  (former DS95 candidate)

The position of the CV now matches the description given by Hoffmeister (1949
Astron. Abh. Erganzungshefte z.d. Astron. Nach., vol. 12, no. 1, A3), and his
chart (MVS 301).  The latter is somewhat confusing since there is a similar
larger pattern of field stars immediately around the CV that caused the G dwarf
just mentioned to be identified as the variable.

\Brian

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