Discovery of a possible nova in M81
ATel #9605; S. C. Williams (Lancaster), M. J. Darnley (LJMU)
on 8 Oct 2016; 15:57 UT
Credential Certification: Steven Williams (scw@astro.ljmu.ac.uk)
Subjects: Optical, Nova, Transient
Referred to by ATel #: 9606
We report the discovery of a new nova candidate in M81 on 3 × 300s Hα images taken using IO:O on the 2m Liverpool Telescope (Steele et al. 2004) on 2016 Oct 8.25 UT. The position of the new transient is RA = 9h55m17.035s, Dec. = +69°06'31.69" (J2000). We calibrated the photometry against stars from SDSS DR7 by assuming on average, the standards have no Hα excess. On 2016 Oct 8.25 UT, we measure the transient to be at mHα = 20.17±0.09. Nothing is visible at that position on our Hα images taken 2016 Oct 3.21 down to a limiting magnitude of approximately mHα = 20.7.
