Thursday, January 31, 2008

Only 14 mag. - so far: rare outburst of AQ CMi

The rarely outbursting star AQ CMi is in outburst, reports the AAVSO: It was at m(vis) = 14.6 mag. on 2008 Jan 31 11:28 UT. For the AAVSO it "is unclear whether the current outburst is a normal outburst or a superoutburst. The last confirmed normal outburst occurred on February 28, 2000, and the last confirmed superoutburst occurred in March 1997, nearly 11 years ago."

In other news only negative reports of yesterday's stellar occultation by asteroid Vineta have come in so far, i.e. the star was seen but did not disappear. Euraster should have a tabulation of reports soon. A long trail of asteroid 2007 TU24 near Messier 81 has been photographed, while Venus and Jupiter are getting ever closer as some pictures show.

And in Austria amateur astronomers had the opportunity to observe with MOST, a small Canadian astronomy satellite: The results of the 6 programs were recently presented at a ceremony in Vienna.

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