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NMO Digest August '03 My apologies to all for not posting an NMO planning tool or digest for July. Moving into a new home after living in one place for a decade was a much bigger job than I had anticipated. Re-locating the observatory to the new property took the rest of my time. Things are 'better than normal' now, and the NMO Planning Tool for August is available online. http://vsnet.aavso.org/publications/bulletin/ Thanks for your patience. A few things have become obvious after putting this list together month after month. Most importantly, observers are following stars into conjunction with the sun and jumping on them again as soon as they become visible in the morning. Most of the stars on the list with old or no data are in conjunction with the sun right now. If it is up during the evening, dark of night, or morning twilight, we are covering it. Also, several CCD observers have taken up the challenge and are reporting observations of faint minima. Visual observers are following stars well down into the 14th magnitude range in many cases, so there is some overlap between visual and CCD observations as was hoped. The original intent of having CCD observers follow these stars when faint, and visual observers reporting estimates in the bright end of the curve has become somewhat muddled as CCD observers are also reporting mag 8-12 observations and some visual observers are reporting 16th mag estimates! Hey, whatever it takes. Keep those observations coming folks. Unfortunately, some southern circumpolar constellations and variables continue to be neglected. Tuc, Car, and Aps contain several NMO stars that still have no data in the database. Maybe we can change that by the end of the month. For those of you who have forgotten what this is all about and those who may not be familiar with the NMO list, I have included the introduction at the end of this message. Mike Simonsen ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The NMO (Needs More Observations) Planning Tool is a table containing information on stars from the AAVSO Bulletin 66 - Predicted Dates of Maxima and Minima of Long Period Variables for 2003. The stars in this table have few observations for last year in the AAVSO International Database. Thus, they need more observations to make their light curves more complete. The NMO table is offered as a planning tool only, and does not infer that these stars are necessarily "priority targets". Stars are sorted by status, based on their current observed magnitudes from AAVSO Quick Look data. Stars brighter than 13.5V are designated B for brighter. Stars fainter than 13.5V are designated F for fainter. Stars with no data available in the Quick Look files are designated NA or N. Stars with observations more than 30 days old are designated O. Each of these categories is listed in order of increasing RA. In the 'notes' column, stars are designated "conjunction" if they are in or approaching conjunction with the sun. Observations of stars setting shortly after sunset are important to help fill in seasonal gaps in the data. Conversely, stars that are coming out of conjunction and are visible before dawn are designated "morning". Observations of these stars are important to fill in seasonal gaps in the data also. Stars are noted as "circumpolar" if they are north of 60 degrees declination or south of -60 degrees declination. Other notes may appear in this column as needed. Many of the stars in the NMO Table are difficult to observe because the charts and/or comparison star magnitude sequences for them are inadequate. We recommend that only experienced observers go after these stars. We encourage visual observers to obtain positive estimates of the stars brighter than 13.5V first, and then move on to other targets. CCD observers and visual observers with large aperture scopes are encouraged to go after the objects fainter than 13.5V. Any observations of stars with old or no data are useful. If you have Microsoft Excel or Word you can download the table in those formats and sort and edit to suit your own needs. The list will be revised and posted before the first of each month throughout the year.
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