Palomar Gattini-IR confirmation of the Galactic transient Gaia 21cpb / PGIR 21fvh as a highly reddened Galactic nova
ATel #14677; K. De (Caltech), A. Kawash (MSU), M. M. Kasliwal (Caltech), M. Hankins (Caltech), J. Jencson (Arizona), J. Sokoloski (Columbia), M. Ashley (UNSW), A. Babul (Columbia), V. Karambelkar (Caltech), R. M. Lau (ISAS/JAXA), A. Moore (ANU), E. O. Ofek (Weizmann), M. Sharma (Columbia), J. Soon (ANU), R. Soria (UCAS/Sydney), T. Travouillon (ANU) on behalf of the Palomar Gattini-IR team
on 4 Jun 2021; 02:11 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Novae
Credential Certification: Kishalay De (kde@astro.caltech.edu)
Subjects: Infra-Red, Optical, Cataclysmic Variable, Nova, Transient
We report bright IR detections and spectroscopic classification of the highly reddened Galactic transient Gaia21cpb / AT2021nwn. The transient was detected in regular survey operations of Palomar Gattini-IR (Moore & Kasliwal 2019; De et al. 2020) as a bright IR transient PGIR21fvh, peaking at J = 11.3 +/- 0.07 mag on 2021-05-10 following the first detection of eruption on UT 2021-05-07.
On UT 2021-06-02, we obtained an optical spectrum of the source with the SED machine spectrograph on the Palomar 60 inch telescope (Blagorodnova et al. 2018). The spectrum shows a red continuum superimposed with a broad H alpha emission feature and emission lines of He I, O I and Ca II. We measure a r - J color of ~ 5 mags based on photometry from SEDM, suggesting a high reddening of AV ~ 7 mags (see De et al. 2021). Overall, the light curve and spectra are consistent with a highly reddened classical nova in the Galactic plane.
