Radio, X-ray and UV observations of Nova Oph 2012.

ATel #4087; Thomas Nelson (Minnesota), Koji Mukai (UMBC and NASA/GSFC), Jennifer Sokoloski (Columbia), Laura Chomiuk (NRAO and CfA), Michael Rupen (NRAO) and Amy Mioduszewski (NRAO)
on 3 May 2012; 18:46 UT
Credential Certification: Thomas Nelson (tnelson@physics.umn.edu)

Tweet

We observed Nova Oph 2012 (PNV J17260708-2551454, CBET 3072) with the Jansky Very Large array in Ka band (32 GHz) on 2012 April 23.4, 29 days after the initial discovery of the nova. The nova was not detected, with a flux density of -13 +/- 32 microJy.

We also obtained a second observation of Nova Oph 2012 with Swift on 2012 Apr 27.6 (33 days after discovery), as a follow up to the observations described in ATel #4055. The total XRT exposure time was 6605 s. The nova remains undetected at X-ray energies, with a 90% confidence upper limit to the 0.3-10 keV count rate of 1.4e-3 c/s. This corresponds to a flux in the same energy range of <8.4e-14 erg/s/cm^-2, assuming the emission can be described as a 5 keV thermal bremsstrahlung plasma attenuated by an absorbing column density of 1e22 cm^-2.

U band images were obtained with the UVOT instrument, also on 2012 Apr 27.6, with a total exposure time of 6630 s. The nova had a mean U magnitude of 12.34 +/- 0.16 in the new observation, only marginally fainter than on day 22.

These observations were obtained as part of the E-Nova project (formerly the EVLA Nova Project, see link below), an effort to obtain high quality radio light curves and complimentary multiwavelength observations of novae visible to the Jansky Very Large Array. Further radio observations with the JVLA are planned.

E-Nova Project