After a decade of near stability at P -0.146 d, the photometric "superhump" periodicity of the old nova V603 Aquilae experienced a remarkable change between 1991and 1992 . Observation in 1992-1994 indicates that the dominant signal was then at a period in the range 0.1338-0.1345 d, 3% shorter than the orbital period. Like its predecessor, the new signal also wanders in period on a timescale of a few months. The full amplitude in 1994 was 0.20 mag, more than twice as great as the superhump displayed during 1980-1991. An intensive observing campaign in 1994 revealed that the old superhump at 0.146 d was still present with approximately undiminished amplitude (averaging 0.07 mag). In a precession model, the simultaneous presence of superhumps above and below the orbital period strongly suggests identification with two independent types of precessional sideband. The observed periods and period changes are consistent with a simple hypothesis: that the longer period ("positive superhump") arises from the prograde motion of the line of apsides, and the shorter period ("negative superhump") arises from the retrograde motion of the line of nodes. A detailed account of how a fluid disk manages to maintain such well-organized motions is sorely needed.

We obtained high-speed photometry of the disintegrating planetesimals orbiting the white dwarf WD 1145+017, spanning a period of four weeks. The light curves show a dramatic evolution of the system since the first observations obtained about seven months ago. Multiple transit events are detected in every light curve, which have varying durations (;3-12 minutes) and depths (;10%-60%). The time-averaged extinction is ;11%, much higher than at the time of the Kepler observations. The shortest-duration transits require that the occulting cloud of debris has a few times the size of the white dwarf, longer events are often resolved into the superposition of several individual transits. The transits evolve on timescales of days, both in shape and in depth, with most of them gradually appearing and disappearing over the course of the observing campaign. Several transits can be tracked across multiple nights, all of them recur on periods of ;4.49 hr, indicating multiple planetary debris fragments on nearly identical orbits. Identifying the specific origin of these bodies within this planetary system, and the evolution leading to their current orbits remains a challenging problem.

We present high precision, model independent, mass and radius measurements for 16 white dwarfs in detached eclipsing binaries and combine these with previously published data to test the theoretical white dwarf mass-radius relationship. We reach a mean precision of 2.4 per cent in mass and 2.7 per cent in radius, with our best measurements reaching a precision of 0.3 per cent in mass and 0.5 per cent in radius. We find excellent agreement between the measured and predicted radii across a wide range of masses and temperatures. We also find the radii of all white dwarfs with masses less than 0.48 M ⊙ to be fully consistent with helium core models, but they are on average 9 per cent larger than those of carbon-oxygen core models. In contrast, white dwarfs with masses larger than 0.52 M ⊙ all have radii consistent with carbonoxygen core models. Moreover, we find that all but one of the white dwarfs in our sample have radii consistent with possessing thick surface hydrogen envelopes (10 −5 ≥ M H /M WD ≥ 10 −4 ), implying that the surface hydrogen layers of these white dwarfs are not obviously affected by common envelope evolution.