al. 2000b for a discrepant claim at twice this value). The photometric modulation was later reported changing shape and period, possibly showing the development of superhumps in this source (Uemura 2000). [ If these are normal superhumps, then the orbital period would be smaller than the photometric superhump modulation by a few percent.]{}

Garcia et al. (2000) reported the first optical spectroscopic results on XTE J1118+480. They found an optical spectrum typical of SXTs in outburst, with very broad H$\alpha$, H$\beta$ and He[ii]{} lines ( FWHM $\gsim 2000$ km s$^{-1}$). These observations also indicated the presence of absorption features and a very low interstellar absorption ($E(B-V) \lsim 0.024$) to the source. These authors suggested that the surprisingly low X-ray ($\sim 40$ mCrab, 2-12 keV) to optical ($V \sim
13$) flux ratio of XTE J1118+480 could be due to a nearly edge-on viewing angle.

Additional X-ray observations revealed the presence of a strong Quasi-Periodic Oscillation (QPO) at 0.085 Hz in the X-ray lightcurve of XTE J1118+480. The shape of the power density spectrum and the hard emission spectrum of XTE J1118+480 prompted Revnivtsev, Sunyaev & Borozdin (2000) to propose that the source is a BH transient, by analogy with other such 