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Swift Observations of the possible Nova P60-M31-080723 in M31

ATel #1629; S. Immler (NASA/CRESST/GSFC)
on 25 Jul 2008; 06:26 UT
Credential Certification: Stefan Immler (immler@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov)

Subjects: Optical, Ultra-Violet, X-ray, Nova

The Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) on board the Swift satellite observed M31 during a pre-planned observation on 2008-07-22 (PI Immler), at the same time of the discovery of a possible nova in M31 (Kasliwal et al., ATel #1627). No ultraviolet or X-ray source is detected at the position of the possible nova. The following 3-sigma upper limits to the UV magnitudes were measured:

Filter-T_start------------T_end-------------Exp---Mag (3-sigma UL)
uvw1 2008-07-22.127 2008-07-22.468 1447 s >20.3
uvm2 2008-07-22.119 2008-07-22.462 1636 s >21.0
uvw2 2008-07-22.110 2008-07-22.453 1636 s >20.5

No X-ray source is detected at the position of the possible nova in the 4.8 ks Swift XRT observation obtained simultaneously with the UVOT observations. The 3-sigma upper limit to the XRT net count rate is 1.91E-03 cts/s, corresponding to an unabsorbed (0.2-10 keV band) X-ray flux of <1.1E-13 erg/cm/cm/s and a luminosity of <8.1E36 erg/s for an adopted power-law spectrum with index 1.6, a Galactic foreground column density of N_H = 6.7E+20 (Dickey & Lockman, 1990, ARAA, 28, 215) and a distance of 784 kpc (Stanek & Garnavich 1998, ApJ 503, L131).