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RS Ophiuchi talk for The Astronomical Society of South Australia

A few days ago, on September 1 2021, I gave a short talk (15 minutes) to the Astronomical Society of South Australia about RS Ophiuchi and the 10 known recurrent novae more generally.

The talk starts at the 1 hour 7 minute 39 second mark (cued up here) in the YouTube video after the main speaker, Associate Professor Gary Hill, who gave a talk about observing astronomical phenomena with high energy neutrinos using a neutrino observatory he helped to construct in Antarctica. He was a hard act to follow.

On the subject of RS Ophiuchi, here is an updated visual light curve for September 4 2021 with my binocular observations in purple.

One thing I talked about was the most recent and the next predicted outbursts of recurrent novae. I neglected to add U Scorpii to the list which is predicted to go into outburst in the next year or two. Unlike T Corona Borealis which is likely to reach magnitude 2.5 or 3 sometime before 2026, U Sco will only be magnitude 7.5 or 8 at maximum (starting from around magnitude 18), fading by several magnitudes within a week.

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