Position from SIMBAD
RA, Dec (J2000) 06 57 39.528 -05 27 14.84
Patrick Wils, 2003 Jan 16
Last month, Tom posted a message to the list in which he announced a couple of new variables from his latest data, among which one at 104.4147 -5.4541 (variation 0.6 mag at V=9.3). This star is the suspected variable NSV 3305 = HD 51569, a late B-type star (V=9.16, B-V = -0.025 from Tycho). It also happens to be located in the Stardial (http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/stardial/) declination zone. I used part of (a slightly modified version of) the TASS pipeline from Michael Richmond to reduce the Stardial images of the area for the years between 1999 and 2002. These confirm that the star is an EA type eclipsing binary with an amplitude of about 0.3 mag in red light. There is also a trace of a shallow secondary minimum. Since Stardial takes images exactly one sidereal day apart, and the aliasing problems following from this, it is difficult to correctly determine the period. One possible period is 3.31 days, but every alias of this period (such as 1.43 days) may be valid as well. Unfortunately it is a bit too far south to be included in the TASS Mk III survey, but Tom's new data may shed some light on this. In any case, it seems to be a worthwhile star to observe further. A comparison star HIP 33463 = HD 51511 with similar colour (V=8.51, B-V=-0.001) is only 4.5' distant.