Twenty-Eight Years of CV Results With the AAVSO

Volume 40 number 1 (2012)

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Paula Szkody
AAVSO Headquarters, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138; mike@aavso.org
Anjum S. Mukadam
AAVSO Headquarters, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138; mike@aavso.org
Boris T. Gaensicke
Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, England
Janet A. Mattei
AAVSO, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
Arne A. Henden
AAVSO, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mike Simonsen
AAVSO, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
Matthew R. Templeton
AAVSO, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
Elizabeth O. Waagen
AAVSO, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
Gary Walker
AAVSO, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
Edward M. Sion
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085
Steve B. Howell
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035
Dean Townsley
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscalosa, AL 35487

Abstract

Working with AAVSO data and AAVSO staff on cataclysmic variables since the 1980s resulted in twenty-nine papers from 1984 to 2011. The early work began with characterization of optical light curves of various dwarf novae and novalikes, then moved into coordination of optical observations with satellites (IUE, EUVE, XMM, Chandra, HST, GALEX) to explore the ultraviolet and X-ray regimes of disk systems versus those containing magnetic white dwarfs. The major advances in the field that were derived from these results are summarized, ending with the recent results on the cooling of the white dwarfs and the return of pulsations in GW Lib and V455 And following their 2007 outbursts, and on the spectra of the two peculiar Z Cam systems IW And and V513 Cas.