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The σ Ori cluster is an unbound aggregate of a few hundred young, low-mass stars centered on the multiple system σ Ori. This cluster is of great interest because it is at an age when roughly half of the stars have lost their protoplanetary disks, and the cluster has a very large population of brown dwarfs. One of the largest sources of uncertainty in the properties of the cluster is that the distance is not well known. The directly measured Hipparcos distance to σ Ori AB is 350 +120 −90 pc. On the other hand, the distance to the Orion OB1b subgroup (of which σ Ori is thought to be a member), 473±40 pc, is far better determined, but it is an indirect estimate of the cluster's distance. Also, Orion OB1b may have a depth of 40 pc along our line of sight. We use main sequence fitting to 9 main sequence cluster members to estimate a best fit distance of 420±30 pc, assuming a metallicity of −0.16±0.11 or 444 pc assuming solar metallicity. A distance as close as 350 pc is inconsistent with the observed brightnesses of the cluster members. At the best fit distance, the age of the cluster is 2-3 Myrs.

A time-of-flight system was constructed for the STAR Experiment for the direct identification of hadrons produced in 197 Au+ 197 Au collisions at RHIC. The system consists of two separate detector subsystems, one called the pVPD (the "start" detector) and the other called the TOFp tray (the "stop" detector). Each detector is based on conventional scintillator/phototube technology and includes custom highperformance front-end electronics and a common CAMAC-based digitization and read-out. The design of the system and its performance during the 2001 RHIC run will be described. The start resolution attained by the pVPD was 24 ps, implying a pVPD single-detector resolution of 58 ps. The total time resolution of the system averaged over all detector channels was 87 ps, allowing direct π/K/p discrimination for momenta up to ∼1.8 GeV/c, and direct (π+K)/p discrimination up to ∼3 GeV/c.

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We report the discovery of a new catacysmic variable system, RXJ051541+0104.6. The optical spectrum has a blue continuum with superposed H I and He I and II emission lines. The soft X-ray spectrum is well fit with a 50 eV black body. The X-ray and optical data are suggestive of an AM Herculis system. The X-ray light curve shows extreme variability on timescales of seconds, and suggests an orbital period of order 8 hours, nearly twice that of the longest catalogued AM Her period. When bright, the X-ray light curve breaks up into a series of discrete bursts, which may be due to accretion of dense blobs of material of about 10 17 gm mass.

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