Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Possible Nova in Centaurus 2009

Following an alert note posted today by Grzegorz Pojmanski in the vsnet-alert newsgroup about a possible nova in Cen, on 2009 May. 13.57 we performed some follow-up of this object remotely through a 0.25-m, f/6 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, from the RAS Observatory (Moorook, Australia).

We can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart with unfiltered CCD magnitude about 8.6 (UCAC-2 Catalogue refernce stars) at coordinates:

R.A. = 13h31m15.77s, Decl. = -63o57'38".6 (equinox 2000.0; UCAC-2 catalogue reference stars).

Comparison with an Anglo-Australian Observatory Schmidt red plate (limiting magnitude about 20), obtained on 1997, Feb. 05, show that this position is nearly coincident with a field star, whose position end figures are 15s.68, 38".6, and magnitude about 15 (however, the extreme stellar crowding due to nearby field stars, makes this measurement rather difficult).

Our image of this transient is available at the following URL:

http://tinyurl.com/qlbesc

UPDATE

This nova has been designated V1213 Cen. For more info see also this paper on NATURE.


by Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero

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