------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 3142 2016 Feb 09 20.53UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England.Telephone/FAX(01256)471074Int:+441256471074 INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.CO.UK Backup: gmh@wdcc1.bnsc.rl.ac.uk WORLD WIDE WEB http://www.theastronomer.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- OJ 287 OUTBURST Mark Kidger: After its recent outburst that peaked at R=12.9 on 2015 December 5, its brightest magnitude for over 30 years, OJ287 has shown irregular variations, although with a generally downward trend, reaching R=15.0 on 2016 Feb 6.0. Since then, multiple observers have reported that a very fast rise has initiated to a new outburst. Ramon Naves and Montse Campas measured OJ287 at R=13.89 on 2016 Feb 9.0, with no indications that the rising trend was slowing at that point. Observations of the current outburst are of great interest. BRIGHT POSSBLE SUPERNOVA IN NGC 5128 (AT 2016adj) Peter Marples et. al. (BOSS) reports on The Astronomer's Telegram 8651 that during ongoing Backyard Observatory Supernova Search (BOSS) they discovered a possible supernova using data from a 300mm F7 SCT telescope at Loganholme Observatory, Queensland, Australia. It was reported on the Transient Name Server by Greg Bock as AT 2016adj, discovered as a new transient source: Object RA (J2000) DEC (J2000) Disc. UT Date Disc. V mag AT 2016adj 13:25:24.11 -43:00:57.50 2016-02-08.563 14.0 The PSN was not present (V>18.0) in an image taken by Stu Parker on 2016 February 3 to a limit of V=18.0 which indicates that this PSN is quite young. S Kiyota, Japan et. al. relay on The Astronomers Telegram 8654 that they obtained follow-up photometric observations of AT 2016adj on UT 2016 Feb 8.68 with the iTelescope 30 at Mt. Stromlo. They performed aperture photometry on the images using the IRAF apphot package and calibrated the results using the AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS; Henden et al. 2015). The colours suggest the object is highly reddened. Observation Date filter mag err 2016-02-08.69 B 17.3 0.1 2016-02-08.68 V 15.2 0.1 2016-02-08.68 R (calibrated to r) 14.3 0.1 2016-02-08.69 I (calibrated to i) 13.0 0.1 Guy M Hurst