[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Star-Watch Reminder

[Mike McCabe]

Greetings, Folks,
This a just a reminder that when the skies clear, be sure to cast an eye to the skies each night after the onset of darkness and be on the lookout for the outburst of T CrB, the recurrent nova in Corona Borealis.
The prediction by the experts is for the outburst to occur sometime in the timeframe of "2024.4 +/-.3", which in a specific dates sense is May 25, 2024, +/- 110 days. Well, -110 days was back on February 5th and we've seen nothing yet, and +110 days is coming up on September 12th. That's less than a month away now, and yes, this is just a prediction but it has gotten a LOT of hype from folks in the professional ranks, so there is some confidence in it.

You'll find the constellation west of the meridian at nightfall now, well above Arcturus and looking more like a bowl than a crown from our perspective.


Don't worry about specifics - you'll be looking for a "new" naked-eye star in the area of the crosshairs, potentially as bright as CrB's alpha star, Alphecca. If you need to, print the chart and rotate it to align with the constellation as seen in the sky. I've been finding that 2x (either those 2x specialty binos or a 2x teleconverter) does an excellent job of showing the whole constellation, with so far nothing in the area of the crosshairs.
Another good thing about the location of the constellation at this juncture is that as the waxing moon gets bigger and brighter in the sky it also gets further away from the constellation. Earlier this year it really affected the visibility of the constellation at times. Now if we could just flush that smoke...
Keep Looking Up,
Mike M.

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