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[vsnet-alert 347] SS LMi


Report on SS LMi

I thought it might be useful to report on what I have discovered about
SS LMi over the past few years. Duerbeck (1987) presents a description
of the observation of the outburst in 1980 as well as a chart of the
region with a circle at the best guess position. 

Deep CCD images of the region show that within the circle there is indeed a
star. It is a red object with a V magnitude near 21-22. On two
occasions, seperated by about 1 year, I have obtained spectra of that
star. The spectra were obtained with the MMT (arizona) and the WHT (La
Palma) and both show identical results. The star within the circle in
Duerbeck appears to be a late type M star, possibly a subgiant.

CCD time-series photometry of the SS LMi region has also be obtained on two
occasions.

One was from Lowell Observatory, and consists of a number of short (1-2
hour long) time-series datasets, obtained during a partially cloudy
week.
The data were reduced and every star within the region near SS LMi
(covering a ~ 5 arc min square and down to V~21), was measured.
NO stars was found to be statistically variable, not even the star
within the Duerbeck circle.

The other time-series data consists of two longer (about 4 hrs each), 
better data sets of the SS LMi region covering a larger
field of view and going to V~22-22.5. They were obtained at the prime focus
of the La Palma INT. These are currently undergoing reduction.

So to date, there is NO evidence that the star within the Duerbeck
circle is a CV at all, and NO evidence of any nearby star being a
variable. So data obtained during this outburst or brightening is indeed
important as the true identity of the SS LMi candidate object 
is currently unknown.

Steve Howell 

 Planetary Science Institute, Astrophysics Group 
 620 N. 6th Ave. 
 Tucson, AZ 85705  USA 
 Phone (520) 622-6300 
 Fax (520) 622-8060 
 e-mail: howell@frankenstein.psi.edu 
 homepage: http://vsnet.psi.edu/

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