Recent observational highlights, September 2010

September 2010 featured a variety of observations possible with epsilon Aurigae rising earlier, nightly.  The star brightened slightly during the month, somewhat at variance with post-mid-eclipse expectations of fading.  Among other key observations made during the month were:

A Hubble Space Telescope far-UV spectrum obtained with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, on 9/1/2010.  The analysis will help confirm the identification of the central star inside the dark disk, claimed by Hoard, Howell and Stencel to be a hot, B5V star.

Robin Leadbeater reported that the strength of neutral potassium once again started increasing after a several month plateau around mid-eclipse.

Next, a second CHARA interferometric imaging run of the fall season at Mt. Wilson resulted in images on the mornings of Sept.23/24.  These images are being compiled in the PhD dissertation of Brian Kloppenborg at the University of Denver.

Finally, a second NASA Infrared Telescope Facility spectrum of the near infrared was obtained with the SpeX instrument, covering the 0.8 to 4 micron region, on Sept.27th.  The goal here involves searching for the appearance of CO bands expected after mid-eclipse.  All of this work will be featured in a series of papers submitted at the end of September for the January 2011 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, WA. 

Keep up your great observational reports here at Citizen Sky!