The likely progenitor of Nova ASASSN-16ra
ATel #10780; T. S. Ferreira & R. K. Saito (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
on 25 Sep 2017; 19:39 UT
Credential Certification: Roberto Saito (saito@astro.ufsc.br)
Subjects: Infra-Red, Nova
Jayasinghe et. al. (ATel #10740) recently reported on the detection of a likely Galactic Nova in the Milky Way disk, confirmed by spectroscopic observations at SOAR Telescope (Chomiuk et al. 2017, ATel #10764). Nova ASASSN-16ra is located at coordinates RA,DEC (J2000) = 15:41:45.24, -53:08:05.9, corresponding to l,b = 326.89516, 1.63144, within the area covered by the VVV Survey in the Galactic disk (vvvsurvey.org; Minniti et al. 2010, New Astronomy, 15, 433).
Multi-band near-IR VVV observations taken in 2010 show the presence of a faint source <0.1 arcsec apart from the reported target position. During the 2010-2013 seasons VVV Ks-band observations of the likely progenitor of Nova ASASSN-16ra shows no significant variation in brightness with mean_Ks=15.63+/-0.07, which is within the VVV photometric errors at these magnitudes. Photometric flags indicate a possible blending or the contamination by a saturated star seen in the vicinity.
The mean extinction for the region around the source position is A_V=8.3 mag (Jayasinghe et. al., ATel #10740), which corresponds to A_K=0.98 mag assuming the Cardelli et al. (1989, ApJ, 345, 245) extinction law.
The VVV coordinates and magnitudes for the likely progenitor of Nova ASASSN-16ra are listed below.
VVV coordinates
VVV ID: VVV J154145.24-530805.95
RA, DEC (J2000) = 15:41:45.243, -53:08:05.95
L,B = -33.109196, 1.624423
VVV multi-band data
Filter mag err flag
Z 19.388 0.063 1
Y 18.331 0.044 1
J 17.113 0.029 1
H 15.985 0.023 1
Ks 15.505 0.027 1
VVV Ks-band variability data
MJD Ks-mag Ks-err flag
55297.34326791 15.505 0.027 1
55305.28641367 15.688 0.049 1
55431.04934256 15.639 0.051 1
55432.07112273 15.665 0.057 1
55433.02375755 15.599 0.047 1
55698.32951946 15.526 0.047 1
55783.99226250 15.683 0.065 1
55791.02497851 15.462 0.048 1
55810.04381970 15.533 0.046 1
55822.98474839 15.575 0.048 1
55823.99406557 15.597 0.054 1
56015.32413532 15.752 0.062 -1
56075.21301805 15.610 0.049 1
56439.35534779 no detection
56459.05695787 15.725 0.067 1
56470.09403989 15.758 0.055 1
56471.00778983 15.627 0.053 1
56472.13656640 15.642 0.049 1
56473.04236125 15.669 0.049 1
56474.02964966 15.664 0.051 1
56475.08951659 15.589 0.048 1
56478.97833551 15.680 0.068 -1
56479.04206267 15.536 0.050 1
56479.10208907 15.548 0.053 1
56479.15781801 15.603 0.067 1
56479.22259010 no detection
56480.01172272 15.731 0.058 1
56480.07944431 15.628 0.064 1
56480.09202643 15.666 0.052 1
56480.15470643 15.634 0.050 1
56484.03256186 15.591 0.049 1
56485.09526270 15.649 0.047 1
56486.02082258 15.602 0.052 1
56487.09263739 15.692 0.056 1
56491.97048095 15.656 0.053 -2
The VVV data are in the natural VISTA Vegamag system. Photometric flags are described in Saito et al. 2012 (A&A, 537, A107): -1 corresponds to a stellar object, -2 to a borderline stellar source and +1 to a non-stellar source.
We gratefully acknowledge use of data from the ESO Public Survey programme ID 179.B-2002 taken with the VISTA telescope, and data products from the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit. T.S.F. and R.K.S. acknowledge support from CNPq/Brazil.
