Spectroscopic follow-up of the recurrent nova LMCN 1968-12a
ATel #8586; Francesco Di Mille (Las Campanas Observatory), Rodolfo Angeloni (Gemini Observatory) & Nidia Morrell (Las Campanas Observatory)
on 24 Jan 2016; 23:31 UT
Credential Certification: Nidia Morrell (nmorrell@lco.cl)
Subjects: Optical, Request for Observations, Cataclysmic Variable, Nova, Variables
We report on spectroscopic follow-up observations of the recurrent nova LMCN 1968-12a (OGLE-2016-NOVA-01; ATel #8578) obtained on 2016 January 24.0345 UT with IMACS at the Magellan-Baade Telescope, Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. Our spectrum covers the range 420nm-900nm with a spectral resolution of 0.5nm. As for the 1990 outburst (Williams et al. 1990 IAUC 4964 ), the spectrum shows the typical signature of a He/N nova around maximum light. It has a moderately blue continuum dominated by broad Balmer and He emission lines. The lines have FWZI of about 10000 km/s and present jagged profiles, as commonly seen in fast novae. A bright narrow component with a velocity of about 1600 km/s is clearly visible on the blue edge of the Balmer and HeI lines. We see HeII 468.6nm displaying instead a more symmetric profile, with a narrow core comparable in flux to that of Hbeta. We encourage further follow-up observations of this nova to monitor the likely very fast spectral evolution characteristic of this class of objects.
