February 13, 2006: The recurrent nova RS Oph appears to be in a very rare outburst, as seen by the following AAVSO observations:
FEB 13.1631 2453779.6631 4.8 Visual RWG Wolfgang Renz, Germany
FEB 10.2100 2453776.71 11.0 Visual GRL Bjorn Granslo, Norway
FEB 08.2493 2453774.7493 10.9 Visual GZN Alfredo Gonzales-Herrera, Spain
The outburst was first detected by Kiyotaka Kanai (Gunma,Isezaki-shi) and Hiroaki Narumi (Ehime,Kita-gun) and reported to the VSNet-Alert mailing list.
This is the first outburst of RS Oph in 21 years! It last peaked on January 28, 1985 at magnitude 5.4. The first stage of the decline then lasted 38 days and it declined at an average rate of 0.1 magnitudes per day. Within 111 days it had returned to its normal state.
Visual, PEP and CCD observations are needed. Please submit observations to the AAVSO as 1744-06 RS Oph.
AAVSO charts from A-D scale and a Henden B,V photometry file are available at the following URL. These charts were released in the past couple of years so please make sure you are them and not using older AAVSO charts. http://www.aavso.org/cgi-bin/searchcharts3.pl?name=rs%20oph [2014 link to charts http://www.aavso.org/vsp]
RS Oph is located at R.A. 17:50:13 Decl. -06:42.5 (2000).
An in-depth discussion of RS Oph is available via the AAVSO web site at the following URL: http://www.aavso.org/vstar/vsots/0500.shtml
This special notice was compiled by: A. Price.
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