High-resolution optical spectroscopy of RS Ophiuchi during 2008 – 2009

AS acknowledges funding from the European Commission under the Marie Curie Host Fellowships Action for Early Stage Research Training SPARTAN programme Contract No MEST-CT- 2004-007512, University of Leicester, UK; the Finnish Graduate School in Astronomy and Space Physics; and Academy of Finland grant 277375. This work is based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated on the island of La Palma jointly by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained in part with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOTSA. We acknowledge with thanks the variable star observations from the AAVSO International Database contributed by observers worldwide and used in this research.