Yes - I am fully aware that TU Leo is not a CV at all but a sighting of the asteroid Flora, since I used to observe it (obviously without success!) - however, as a bit of a diversion I went to ALADIN and entered its name. In the quoted position of TU Leo there is indeed a star, which is identified as TU Leo! I assume that ALADIN gets its data from the GCVS (which should surely know better) but isn’t it strange that there is actually a star at its position?
Hi Mike,
no it takes it from SIMBAD. In the GCVS this star does not exist now.
I assume the closest star to the original TU Leo position has been kept as the “CV”.
It is a 14.6 Vmag. late F/early G star.
Before my second cup of coffee… out of curiosity I had a look at the GAIA3 and LAMOST4 spectra available from VizieR. The coarse GAIA spectrum shows a metal-poor G star as Sebastian suggests, with a notional “metals” type around F5 or F8. The better LAMOST spectrum suggests a temperature type maybe G5 and F5/8 metals. Definitely a dwarf, so a fair spectral type would be G5mF5V.
The GAIA catalogue itself fits a 6000K temperature template with metallicity [Fe/H] = -1.5, roughly consistent with my type estimates. It shows mean rv = +84 km/sec, thus somewhat fast but not unusually so.
All this is pretty typical at high galactic latitude, and one would not expect such a star to be variable.
\Brian
Cheers Sebastian, I did have an old chart for ‘TU Leo’ but obviously don’t any more, otherwise I might have seen that 146 star as a ‘comp’. I believe CV Aqr is another ‘CV’ that was in fact an asteroid.
Quick followup, but regarding SIMBAD (so maybe this isn’t the right forum, but hey…): Not sure what SIMBAD’s source for VS data is, but it looks antique. SIMBAD isn’t a catalogue in itself but a ‘container’ - because I searched for V1117 Her and it was listed as a Mira Star, which is an old definition. Modern type should be UXOR of some sort.