Recurrent Nova M31N 2008-12a: Liverpool Telescope observation of the waning 2016 eruption

ATel #9906; M. J. Darnley (LJMU), S. C. Williams (Lancaster), M. Henze (CSIC-IEEC), A. W. Shafter (SDSU), S. Kafka (AAVSO), M. Kato (Keio University), for a larger collaboration
on 28 Dec 2016; 09:33 UT
Credential Certification: Matt Darnley (M.J.Darnley@ljmu.ac.uk)

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The 2016 eruption of the remarkable recurrent nova M31N 2008-12a (see Darnley 2016 for a summary of past eruptions) was reported in ATel #9848; follow-up observations of this eruption have been reported in ATels #9852, #9853, #9857, #9861, #9864, #9865, #9872, #9874, #9881, #9883, #9885 and #9891.

Here we report a deep Sloan u'-band observation of the 2016 eruption with the Liverpool Telescope (LT; Steele et al. 2004) around 15.5 days after the expected onset. These observations took place after a long and sustained period of poor weather on La Palma and were the first LT observations of this eruption since day 4.

This pair of 600s LT observations indicated that the nova had faded to u' = 22.81 ± 0.14. This is consistent with the evolution of the u'-band light curve of the 2015 eruption as published by Darnley et al. (2016), and indicates that the late-time behaviour of the 2016 eruption may be similar to that of the 2015 eruption.

Detailed descriptions of the past eruptions are available in Darnley et al. (2014, 2015, 2016), Henze et al. (2014, 2015a, 2015b), and Tang et al. (2014).