Discovery of a M81 nova candidate

ATel #9642; M. Henze (CSIC-IEEC), S. C. Williams (Lancaster), M. J. Darnley (LJMU), A. Kaur, D. H. Hartmann (Clemson), G. Sala, J. Jose, J. Figueira (UPC-IEEC), M. Hernanz (CSIC-IEEC), K. Hornoch (Ondrejov), A. W. Shafter (SDSU), H. Meusinger (TLS)
on 17 Oct 2016; 16:09 UT
Credential Certification: Martin Henze (henze@ice.cat)

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The M81 nova monitoring collaboration reports a possible nova in the M81 galaxy. The position of the transient object is RA = 09:55:05.63, Dec = +69:06:47.3 (J2000; 1 sigma error 0.3 arcsec). First discovered in 3 × 300s Hα images obtained with the Liverpool Telescope (LT), it was confirmed in a stack of 20 × 200s R filter images taken slightly earlier with the Telescopi Joan Oro (TJO) on Oct 15.035 UT. Nothing was seen at this position in a similar TJO stack six days earlier or in previous data. Here we list the observing dates and corresponding photometry:

 
Date [UT]      | Mag   | Err  | Filter  | Telescope 
2016-10-09.046 | <21.5 |      | R       | TJO 
2016-10-15.035 | 20.6  | 0.4  | R       | TJO 
2016-10-15.193 | 20.00 | 0.08 | H-alpha | LT 

The LT (Steele et al. 2004) is a fully robotic 2-m telescope operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. Our observations use the IO:O optical CCD camera of the LT. The TJO is a 80-cm Ritchey-Chretien F/9.6 telescope at the Observatori Astronomic del Montsec, owned by the Catalan Government and operated by the Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, Spain. It uses a Finger Lakes PL4240-1-BI CCD Camera with a Class 1 Basic Broadband coated 2k x 2k chip with 13.5 microns square pixels. Both LT and TJO photometry are based on the SDSS DR7 photometry catalogue.