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The RXTE X-ray lightcurve of Eta Car through June 27 is available at http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/eta_car/etacar_rxte_lightcurve/ a drop by 1.1 cts/s - also see http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/eta_car/2003.5/resources/reports/xray.html for more details. In particular I added a plot of the orbit based on our earlier orbital elements, with key dates annotated. I've also added a plot where I've tried to "maximize" the correlation between cycle 1 and cycle 2 at phases >1.95. A plot of the comparison is available from the link above. In playing around, my eyeball estimate is that using a period of 2024.24 days and assuming that the current cycle is brighter by about 28% produces the best correlations. Kris made the good point to remember the sampling differences between the "pre-ingress" data in cycle 1 and cycle2 (in cycle 1 we had ~weekly monitoring, and in cycle 2 ~daily monitoring) so I've plotted the actual observations from cycle 1 as individual points in the plots. The correlation is certainly not perfect but given the sampling differences it's pretty remarkable how good it is! cheers Mike -- *********************************************************** Dr. Michael F. Corcoran Universities Space Research Association Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD 20771 301-286-5576 (office) 301-286-1684 (fax) corcoran@barnegat.gsfc.nasa.gov http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/bio.html ***********************************************************
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