Independent Discovery of a Probable Nova in M81

ATel #11499; K. Hornoch, H. Kucakova (Ondrejov), S. C. Williams (Lancaster), M. Henze (SDSU), G. Sala, J. Jose (UPC-IEEC), H. Meusinger (TLS), M. J. Darnley (LJMU), A. Kaur (PSU), D. H. Hartmann (Clemson), A. W. Shafter (SDSU)
on 3 Apr 2018; 19:11 UT
Credential Certification: Allen W. Shafter (ashafter@mail.sdsu.edu)

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The M81 nova monitoring collaboration reports the independent discovery of a probable nova in M81 on a co-added 2700-s unfiltered CCD frame taken on 2018 Apr. 2.815 UT with the 0.65-m telescope at Ondrejov.

The object was first announced and designated AT2018apj by Z. Xu and X. Gao (see here) and is located at R.A. = 9h55m31s.86, Decl. = +69o09'14".6 (equinox 2000.0), which is 7.0" west and 319.5" north 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> 
 
2018-03-30.823 | <21.4 |      | C       | OND  
2018-04-02.815 |  20.3 | 0.15 | 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).

Discovery image