------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 2308 2007 Feb 18 13.16UT 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------- V1280 SCORPII Further to the discovery announcement for this nova on TA E-Circular 2306, it has brightened considerably during the last few days despite comments from some sources that the early spectra suggested it had been near maximum. Aaron Price, AAVSO, reports: We have placed online a chart for V1280 Sco, made by Mike Simonsen. You can download it at the URL below, along with a preliminary .dat file from Sonoita. It is a single pass on a marginal night at high airmass and with short, scintillation-dominated exposures. So only use it as a guide and expect the numbers to change in the next week or so as Sonoita observes it further. And we'll be working on fainter sequences (which will be loaded into VSP) in preparation for its eventual decline. I'll post again when the fainter stars are ready. http://www.aavso.org/cgi-bin/searchcharts3.pl?name=v1280%20sco Recent magnitude estimates: 2007 Feb 13.24, 6.0 (J. Ripero, Spain); 16.46, 3.7 (Mike Simonsen, USA); 16.74, 4.3 (Andrew Pearce, Australia) (2478) TOKAI D. Higgins, Canberra, Australia et. al., report on CBET 824 that photometric observations obtained during 2007 Jan. 20-28 reveal that minor planet (2478) is a synchronous binary system with a period of 25.885 +/- 0.007 hours. A combined rotation light curve has an amplitude of 0.41 mag, and superimposed mutual events indicate a lower limit on a secondary-to-primary mean-diameter ratio of 0.72. Guy M Hurst