COMMISSION 27 OF THE I. A. U.
         INFORMATION BULLETIN ON VARIABLE STARS
                   Number 1665

                                    Konkoly Observatory
                                    Budapest
                                    1979 August 27


           PHOTOMETRIC OBSERVATIONS OF RZ ERIDANI *

    RZ Eridani (BD-10d993, R.A.(1970) 04h42m, Dec.(1970) -10d44'; V = 7.70)
has been included by Hall (1976) in his list of long-period RS CVn stars.
Two characteristics often found in RS CVn stars are period changes and a 
distortion wave in the out-of-eclipse light curve. We report here on s search
for these properties in the system RZ Eridani.

OBSERVATIONS: Observations were made in the winter of 1977/1978 using the 46
cm reflector at Rosemary Hill Observatory with a standard UBV Photometer, The
comparison star was BD-10d977 and the check star was BD-10d982. The 
V-filter
observations shown in the Figure are neither corrected for differential 
extinction nor transformed to the UBV system. The phases were computed from
the ephemeris of Gadomski (1957).

              J.D. 2423854.33 + 39.2826E.


                          [FIGURE 1]


DISCUSSION: Although both ingress and egress of the primary eclipse were
observed, no observations were obtained during totality. No secondary 
eclipse was detected. There appears to be no significant distortion wave
within the limits of the observational scatter, We note that there appears

* Contribution of the Department of Astronomy of the University of Florida No. 5


to be no significant change in period. Primary eclipse ingress and egress
observations were of the same eclipse and yield a graphical solution for the
time of minimum of
              J.D. 2443574.083 +- 0.005.
This minimum, combined with that of Gadomski, yields a revised period of
               P = 39.28238d +- 0.00005
in agreement with the results of Gadomski.

   We have continued observation of this system and we plan to tabulate all
observations in a future paper.



 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We would like to thank E. Whit Ludington for his 
participation in these observations. This work was supported by NSF grant INT-76-
80588.


	Rosemary Hill Observatory    DANIEL B. CATON
	Department of Astronomy      JOHN P. OLIVER
	University of Florida
	Gainesville, Florida 32611
	U. S. A.                     





References :

Gadomski, J. 1957. Acta Astronomica 7, No. 1, 83. [BIBCODE 1957AcA.....7...83G ]
Hall, D. S. 1976. In IAU Colloquium No. 29, Multiple Periodic Variable
   Stars, Part I, ed. W. S. Fitch (Dordrecht: Reidel), p. 287. [BIBCODE 1976ASSL...60..287H ]