Waiting for U Scorpii to Blow Up - or at least flare up

Bradley E. Schaefer has made a risky prediction in Sky and Telescope. He has studied U Scorpii and come to the conclusion that this recurrent nova will flare up in 2009. Actually, in some of his other writings he hints that he believes the star may go supernova.

Rather than summarize his work, you can find it by going to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/43435242.html

I've been observing U Scorpii and taking a few images. So far, nothing. But who knows?

The first image, taken on May 1, 2009, shows the target zone, which I identified with the help of the Simbad program.




This next image has a poor quality, but I believe I can identify U Scorpii in this one. I'm still waiting for the flare up :).


I took these images with my 14 inch f/11 Schmidt-Cassegrain, and an SBIG ST-10XME CCD Camera.