Nova in the LMC

ATel #4540; L. Wyrzykowski, K. Ulaczyk, A. Udalski, S. Kozlowski (Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, Poland), on behalf of the OGLE team
on 4 Nov 2012; 19:23 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Novae
Credential Certification: Lukasz Wyrzykowski (wyrzykow@ast.cam.ac.uk)

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We report the detection of a likely nova outburst - OGLE-2012-NOVA-003, found toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the course of the OGLE-IV search for transients (Wyrzykowski et al. ATEL #4495), carried out with the Warsaw 1.3-m Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory, Chile.

The nova is located at Ra,Dec (J2000.0) = 5:20:21.09 -73:05:43.3. There is no detection of a progenitor on the reference image, so it must have been fainter than I>22 mag. The nova was discovered during a semi-automated search for transients on 2012-11-04.358 UT (HJD = 2456235.85867) at magnitude 13.9 in the I-band.

Given the available OGLE data we can constrain the time of the explosion to between 2012-10-22.374 (HJD= 2456222.87366, last frame without the nova) and 2012-10-25.310 (HJD= 2456225.80963, first frame with the nova). On the first frame the object is saturated with a magnitude between 11 and 12 mag in the I-band.

The data collected so far by the OGLE survey in the I-band are listed below:
2456230.75237 12.929 0.001
2456232.85822 13.338 0.001
2456235.85867 13.928 0.001
The data indicate a fast decline rate with t2~10d and t3~15d.

Photometric and spectroscopic follow-up is strongly encouraged.

Finding chart and light curve are available on the OGLE Transients Search pages.