Dorrit Hoffleit, Raymond Berg, and the “Unnamed Fleming Variables”: An Epilogue (Abstract)

Volume 48 number 1 (2020)

Kristine Larsen

286 Francis Street, New Britain, CT 6053; larsen@ccsu.edu

Abstract

(Abstract only) At the 1997 AAVSO Annual Meeting, Dorrit Hoffleit brought to the attention of the organization fourteen of Williamina Paton Fleming’s variable star discoveries that still had insufficient data to merit classification in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) and urged further investigation of these stars. In follow-up presentations the author reported on the official status of these stars in VSX (incorporating both AAVSO and ASAS observations) as well as offered a new period for one of them. A tentative suggestion was offered for highly experienced visual observer Ray Berg’s (BEB) follow-up observations in 1998 in which three of these stars (WX Ret, CL Hyi, NSV 3379) demonstrated relative stability even though further observations show variability on the order of a full magnitude or more. In this final follow-up presentation to this earlier work, ASAS-SN data are included, resulting in further determinations concerning the nature of the four remaining suspected variables (NSV 3379, NSV 7645, NSV 11792, NSV 12993) as well as a final explanation for Berg’s 1998 visual observations of non-variability in the three aforementioned stars.