Recurrent Nova M31N 2008-12a: on-going Liverpool Telescope photometry of the 2015 eruption

ATel #7980; M. J. Darnley (LJMU), M. Henze (IEEC/CSIC), A. W. Shafter (SDSU), M. Kato (Keio University), for a larger collaboration
on 2 Sep 2015; 12:49 UT
Credential Certification: Matt Darnley (M.J.Darnley@ljmu.ac.uk)

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In ATel #7964 we reported the discovery of the 2015 eruption of the recurrent nova M31N 2008-12a (Darnley et al. 2014, 2015, Henze et al. 2014, 2015a). Also see ATel #7965, #7967, #7968, #7969, #7974, #7976, #7979.

This recurrent nova has a remarkably short duty cycle of either 6 months or 1 year, and this is the eighth eruption detected in as many years (dating back to 2008; Henze et al. 2015b).

Here we present additional late-time photometry obtained by the Liverpool Telescope (all times UT). All data reported here are from single exposures and make up a small subset of our entire dataset.

2015 Sep 02.204 u' = 19.1 ± 0.2
2015 Sep 02.227 B = 20.88 ± 0.07
2015 Sep 02.234 V = 21.07 ± 0.08
2015 Sep 02.241 r' = 20.90 ± 0.07
2015 Sep 02.248 i' = 21.0 ± 0.1

The surface brightness of M31 at the position of the nova is approximately u'=22.0, B=22.3, V=22.0, r'=22.2, and i'=22.0, so at ~5 days since detection the 2015 eruption will soon be rendered unobservable from most ground-based (seeing limited) facilities.