Discovery of a Probable Nova in M81

ATel #11098; K. Hornoch, H. Kucakova (Ondrejov), S. C. Williams (Lancaster), M. Henze (SDSU), G. Sala, J. Jose, J. Figueira, P. Sin (UPC-IEEC), H. Meusinger (TLS), M. J. Darnley (LJMU), A. Kaur, D. H. Hartmann (Clemson), A. W. Shafter (SDSU)
on 27 Dec 2017; 19:36 UT
Credential Certification: Steven Williams (scw@astro.ljmu.ac.uk)

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The M81 nova monitoring collaboration reports the discovery of a probable nova in M81 on a co-added 2610-s unfiltered CCD frame taken on 2017 Dec. 26.016 UT with the 0.65-m telescope at Ondrejov (OND).

The object designated PNV J09553619+6901599 is located at R.A. = 9h55m36.19, Decl. = +69o01'59".9 (equinox 2000.0), which is 16.2" east and 115.2" south of the center of M81 (see link to discovery image below).

Here we list the observing dates and corresponding photometry:

 
  Date [UT]    |  Mag  | Err  | Filter  | Telescope 
2017-12-13.205 | <21.8 |      | C       | OND  
2017-12-26.016 |  20.9 | 0.3  | C       | OND 
2017-12-27.091 |  20.6 | 0.2  | Hα      | LT 
2017-12-27.199 |  20.5 | 0.25 | C       | OND 
 

The OND 0.65-m is a reflecting telescope at the Ondrejov observatory operated jointly by the Astronomical Institute of ASCR and the Astronomical Institute of the Charles University of Prague, Czech Republic. It uses a Moravian Instruments G2-3200 CCD camera (with a Kodak KAF-3200ME sensor and standard BVRI photometric filters) mounted at the prime focus. The unfiltered OND photometry was calibrated against R-band comparison stars from Perelmuter & Racine (1995). The LT (Steele et al. 2004) is a fully robotic 2-m telescope operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. Our observations use the IO:O optical CCD camera of the LT. The LT photometry is based on the SDSS DR7 photometry catalogue. The Hα magnitude is defined on the AB system where m_Hα = 0 for f_λ = 2.53 × 10^-9 erg/cm²/s/Å. Through a 90 Å wide filter, this corresponds to a zero point flux of ~2.3 × 10^-7 erg/cm²/s.

Discovery image