Discovery of a possible Nova in M31

ATel #15833; Agoston Horti-David, Krisztian Sarneczky, Jozsef Vinko (Konkoly Observatory)
on 29 Dec 2022; 22:57 UT
Credential Certification: Jozsef Vinko (vinko@astro.as.utexas.edu)

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We report the discovery of PNV J00424067+4115451, a new possible nova in M31, on unfiltered CCD frames taken with the 0.6-m Schmidt telescope at Piszkesteto Station of Konkoly Observatory.

The transient was found on stacked, galaxy-subtracted frames with a total exposure time of 15 minutes at the position of R.A. = 00:42:40.673, Dec. = +41:15:45.07 (J2000) taken on 2022-12-29 19:36:48 UT. It is also present on the frames collected on the previous night, 2022-12-28, at 18:42:43 UT. The last non-detection occurred on 2022-12-27 at 17:10:23 UT.

Aperture photometry of the transient was tied to r-band AB-magnitudes of local comparison stars taken from the Pan-STARRS DR2 data release. We measure the following (unfiltered) magnitudes:

 
UT Date         Magnitude (error) 
2022-12-28.780  18.40 (0.15) 
2022-12-29.400  16.84 (0.07) 

At the distance of M31 (D ~ 0.8 Mpc) the transient has an absolute magnitude of -7.7, consistent with a classical nova before peak brightness.