The end

Dear Friends,

The RZ LMi 2009 Campaign is officially closed. Thank you very much for your observations, spending your time for the reduction and sending the data. You did a great job which will turn into nice
paper in close future (I hope).

More superhumps

Jerry Foote sent more nice superhumps from current superoutburst of RZ LMi.
The star was still brightening.

Superhumps!

Bob Koff, in spite of bright Moon, nicely traced the birth of the superhumps. Enjoy!

Bob caught it

Bob Koff has just sent me his observations indicating that RZ LMi is going to the superoutburst. During his run the star brightened from 14.9 to 14.7 mag. There is no trace of superhumps yet.
Keep observing!

Missed again

Looks like we missed the begining of the superoutburst again...

RZ LMi in outburst

Newst data sent by Bob Koff indicate that RZ LMi is in the ordinary outburst. Tomorrow it should be going into quiescence and a day after tomorrow we might expect begining of the superoutburst.

It appeared that Bob wasn't in fact the last of the Mohicans. I obtained some data from David Boyd, Kosmas Gazeas and Marcin Wardak covering last few days. The light curve is updated.

The last of the Mohicans

Our the last of the Mohicans - Bob Koff, who is still observing RZ LMi, reports that the star is back in quiescence after short ordinary ourburst. We expect one more ordinary outburst and then the superoutburst we wait for. If we want to catch its begining we should restart our campaign within two days or so.

Back in quiescence

Bob Koff has just sent me the observation indicating that RZ LMi is in quiescence at magitude of 16.7.

End of the superoutburst?

The combined data of David Boyd, Pawel Kankiewicz and Bob Koff show interesting standstill followed by a quick decrease of the brightness indicating most probably the end of the superoutburst.

What a coverage!

Bob and Jerry again sent me their latest results. I can show you now the light curve of the present superoutburst. It looks great.

Nice superhumps again

Bob Koff and Jerry Foote sent me their long runs from last night. Their combined light curves are shown below.

Very long run

For the first time we have worked as almost Whole Earth Telescope. Below you can find the light curve combined from observations of David Boyd, Bob Koff, Kosmas Gazeas and again Bob. I still wait for the data from Pawel Kankiewicz who is observing now in Kielce and will add some points at the end of the curve.

More nice superhumps

Bob Koff has just sent me his last run containing very nice superhumps shown below with points obtained by David Boyd. We can see the clear shift comming most probably from using different comparison stars.

Nice superhumps

According to the data of David Boyd, RZ LMi is showing clear superhumps and still rising. Indeed the current position on the global light curve with mean magnitude of 14.3 suggests that the star should brighten to around 14.0 mag which is typical for the begining of the superoutburst.

RZ LMi in superoutburst

David Boyd (UK) reports RZ LMi being in superoutburst showing clear superhumps and overall trend still appears to be upward. Further observations strongly needed!

Start of the superoutburst?

David Boyd reports that over approx 6 hrs last night he saw a steady rising trend from ~16.8 to ~16.5 mag. The early part of the run was through thin cloud but it then cleared. There appears to be a modulation in the data with quite a
well-defined period of 0.098 d. His nice light curve is shown below.

Still in quiescence

Last night (HJD 875.3) Bob Koff was able to get only two images of RZ LMi and found it at 16.6 mag. Thus the star is still in quiescence.

It was an outburst

Bob Koff has just clarified the situation. His newest data show clear decreasing trend indicating that RZ LMi was backing into the quiescence after next ordinary outburst. Magnified fragment of the light curve below.

Where are we?

Due to the gaps in the light curve the current situation of RZ LMi is uncertain. On HJD 869.3 it was at 15.9 mag, barely visible on stack of ten or so exposures obtained by Marcin Wardak during misty night. On HJD 873.3, according to David Boyd, it was at 14.9 mag. Recent data of Kosmas Gazeas show that RZ LMi is at around 16.0 mag. Most probably we saw an ordinary outburst. Thus the ingress of the superoutburst might appear very soon.

RZ LMi bright

David Boyd (UK) has just sent me information that he observed RZ LMi very briefly tonight at 19.00 UT during a gap in cloud cover and found it at mag 14.88 (unfiltered). No further observations have
been possible here tonight.

Waiting for the superoutburst

I have just added the light curve obtained by Kosmas Gazeas on Feb 5/6, which nicely shows the end of the ordinary outburst. As I wrote in the earlier post, Marcin Wardak (Poland) reported that RZ LMi was in the minimum on Feb 6/7.

Now we have short break in the observations partialy due to the bad weather in almost all locations but also due to the Full Moon shinning in the vicinity of RZ LMi. But starting from this night the conditions
are getting better and I strongly encourage you to observe.

Now RZ LMi should be in the another ordinary outburst and around Feb 12-14 we should expect next superoutburst. Keep observing!

RZ LMi still faint

Marcin Wardak (Poland) was observing last night. It was misty and almost Full Moon caused high brightness of sky level. RZ LMi was not visible on 180 sec exposures taken by 12-cm refractor. I am waiting for the detailed report from the observer.

RZ LMi faint

Kosmas Gazeas (Athens, Greece) was observing last night and reports RZ LMi faint sitting in quiescence. We should expect next ordinary outburst within a day or two.

Ordinary outburst

Newst data from Jerry Foote and Bob Koff show that RZ LMi is in the outburst again. What is interesting, the star during one night reached maximum and started to fade. It may indicate that this outburst will be much shorter than the explosion observed before superoutburst. Again, at the end of the run the small humps are visible.

What a light curve!

Jerry Foote has just sent me extremely interesting light curve of RZ LMi. It is still faint and started to show late superhumps. One of these humps has quite large amplitude. Additionaly, at the end of the run RZ LMi started to brighten. Do we have new outburst?

Quiescence

Data sent by Jacek Pala and obtained on nights Feb 1/2 and 2/3 clearly show that RZ LMi is now in quiescence having magnitude of around 16.5.

End of the superoutburst

The observations from last two nights, made by Jerry Foote and Bob Koff, clearly show the end of the superoutburst. During the last night RZ LMi faded from 14.3 to 14.6 mag and amplitude of the superhumps decreased significantly. It is interesting to check the existence of the late superhumps which should born very soon.

Early observations of the superoutburst

I have just added to the light curve the observations made by Marcin Wardak (Poland). These data contain only 9 points (laptop crash did not allowed to make more) but are made on Jan. 25 at 18:30 UT and are now our earliest observations of the current superoutburst.

More superhumps

I have just received the nice light curves of RZ LMi from Bob Koff and Jerry Foote. Its show clear superhumps with amplitude of 0.1 mag. The superoutburst continues. Keep observing and look below at beautiful effects of these observations :)

Superoutburst confirmed

I have reveived preliminary report from Kosmas Gazeas (Athens, Greece). Kosmas wrote:

The weather remained stable all night long and I managed to get a continuous series of about 300 images between 18:20 UT until 04:20 UT this morning. We will soon have a complete 10-hour lightcurve in our hands! The target was bright enough to be captured with a 0.4 m telescope. No obvious trent of light variation was noticed, but some small humps were visible. RZ LMi is still in the outburst mode!

RZ LMi in superourburst!

Jacek Pala (Slupsk, Poland) reports RZ LMi at magnitude 13.6 this morning (Jan 26, 3 GMT). It is our superoutburst, most probably!

Things you can do when is cloudy

Lack of good weather encouraged me to do some preliminary analysis. Our last outburst appeared to be quite long and bright. I compared it withvmean profile of outburst derived from 2004-2005 observations. See the picture below. The red and green points show January 2009 and mean 2004-2005 profiles of the outburst, respectively.



It is clear that our newest explosion was about 0.5 mag brighter and lasted about 1 day longer than a typical outburst from previous seasons.

Another pecularity is current supercycle length. We are waiting for the superoutburts for at least 23 days. This value is significantly higher than 19-day supercyle of RZ LMi.

Sad news

All our locations report bad weather conditions so I have no news to share with you. Fortunately, RZ LMi went to the quiescence and should stay there for a day or two.

Not a precursor

The newest data sent by Bob Koff show that RZ LMi faded to 15.5 mag and is about 1 mag fainter than during previous night. Ongoing explosion thus looks like an ordinary outburst and not a precursor seen at the beginning of the superoutburst.

Superhumps!

I have just received new data from Jerry Foote (CBA Utah) who uses 60-cm telescope and receives very good quality light curves. The humps seen previously in data of Bob Koff are now even more clear having amplitude around 0.05 mag. Below you cen see the detrended Jerry's light curve of RZ LMi from last night.


Additionaly, I computed the power spectrum of this light curve and obtained clear peak at frequency 16.55 c/d which corresponds to the value of period equal to 0.0604(8) days. It roughly agrees with the period of superhumps which is 0.059396(4) days.

It looks, we have an outburst with superhumps. Another possibility is that this outburst is so-called precursor which ignites the superoutburst. Waiting for more data to clarify this situation.

It is not a superoutburst.

It is not a superoutburst. Newest data sent by Bob Koff show that RZ LMi faded comparing to last night and is still fading being now at around 14.7 mag. But....

See the light curve sent by Bob. It is extremely interesting that during ordinary outburst we see something like mini-superhumps! Continue watching this star!

Waiting for the superhumps...

According to the AAVSO light curve of RZ LMi the last two confirmed superoutbursts started around JD 2454788 and 2454833. Using 19-day value of supercycle, the first superoutburst suggests occurence of the current superoutburst at JD 2454845. The ephemeris based on the second and most recent superoutburst gives the date around JD 2454852. This value agrees very well with ongoing explosion and may suggest that we are observing a superoutburst. Where are the superhumps???

Ongoing explosion

Latest reports form Jacek Pala (Słupsk, Poland) and Pawel Kankiewicz (Kielce, Poland) found RZ LMi with increasing brightness at around 15.4 mag. The newest data from Bob Koff (Antelope Hills Observatory, USA) clarify the situation - RZ LMi is undergoing the explosion reaching now 14.2 mag. But we still do not see any superhumps. Another ordinary outburst?

Do we have superoutburst?

According to our observations, RZ LMi has stayed in quiescence since JD 844 i.e. during last 7 days (we saw only one normal outburst during this time). Taking into accound 19-day supercycle of this star a superoutburst may appear very soon. The data sent by Bob Koff and Jerry Foote show slight increasing trend in the brightness of the star during last night. Further data gathered by Pawel Kankiewicz indicate that the star is about 1 mag brighter than in quiescence. Do we have superoutburst? Keep watching, keep watching, keep watching :)

Greetings,
Arek