The plan is to use images taken through different filters to record brightness and temperature changes as the star goes into outburst. The critical timing required by this project makes the Internet almost as important as the telescope. In the control room an email message arrives from Gerry Dyck suggesting possible target stars for tonight. Gerry routinely makes visual observations of these eruptive stars from his home in Massachusetts. And is one example of an eruptive class of variable stars called dwarf novae.
Outbursts occur at quasi-regular intervals of weeks to months.
His predictions are critical because we are interested in the earliest stages-the very onset of an outburst. Once the star has brightened enough for announcements to appear on the Internet, it is already too late for us. A few years ago a former student of mine, Dr. Cathy Mansperger, caught the rise to outburst of another dwarf nova. She was observing with a spectrograph attached to the 72-inch telescope at Lowell Observatory. She recorded details of the earliest moments of the outburst.