[vsnet-alert 346] Re: SS LMI fading from unobserved outburst?

[Taichi Kato <tkato@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

   Though I am not completely sure whether the "right" SS LMi is being
observed, every occasions (a few times in the past several years) I found
an image of a star (V~18 or 19) very near the reported position in the
Duerbeck's atlas (1987 Space Sci. Rev. 45, 1), which showed a blank field
in POSS.

   I have put a finding chart down to V=18.5 in the VSNET Home Page
(http://vsnet.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet, under "Whats's new" or "Topics";
a GIF image may be also obtained via VSNET anonymous ftp
http://ftp.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/pub/vsnet under DNe/SS_LMi) based on
a CCD image taken on 1996 Jan. 1, which also showed a star at the same
position.  Unfortunately the object was not automatically measured when
making a chart, so the approximate position of the variable was taken from
Duerbeck 1987, which may be different from that of the detected image by
a few arcseconds.  I hope this would help.

   There has been at least one additional ocassion when the object was
positively observed (reported in IAUC by Howell, if I remember correctly).
Although I am not perfectly confident of the identitiy of the object, my
observations before and after Howell's observation showed a red persistent
source roughly at the same magnitude as we are observing recently.  From
these observations, it may be that SS LMi is not experiencing an outburst,
but rather the object was anomalously faint when POSS plate was taken
(before the discovery of a major brightening in 1980).

   Clearly it is an urgent task to confirm the identity.  We hope we can
provide a CCD image (in GIF) through the VSNET Home Page and anonymous ftp.

Regard,
Taichi Kato

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