Possible Nova Discovery?

[cresskh]

Hi guys,

I don't know where's the proper forum to ask this, I hope this is a good start.
Below is my email to CBAT 1.5 month ago, but I'm not getting any reply or acknowledgement, so I thought I'd like to borrow your expertise to help to determine what is the object/phenomenon that I had come across.

 

Quote

Hi CBAT,


Date/Time of Discovery: UTC 20:09:09 2nd October, 2016
Observation Method: Photographic
Specific Details on Instrumentation: Orion ST-80A (80mm, f/4, FOV: 2.234°, 3.365°) on iOptron ZEQ25GT, with Nikon D5200 unmodded. Exposure time was 60s on interval 1s.
Observation Site: Kee's Farmstay, Pertang, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia (GPS:102°13'48"E, 02°57'00"N, Elevation: ~ 402ft)


Suspected Nova Details:
RA/DEC: Within 0.02° FOV centered at J2000.0 5h42m10.70s -00°40'53.3"
Apparent Mag: Approximately 8-9mag (guesstimate)


Observation Details:
I was imaging IC434 Horsehead Nebula with NGC2024 Flame Nebula on two consecutive nights, UTC 01/10/2016 20:24 - 22:06, and UTC 02/10/2016 19:37 - 21:18, using exposure of 60s on interval 1s. That's 94 subs on first night, 100 sub on second night. Out of the 194 subs, only 143 subs are acceptable due to cloudy weather. When I was going through the subs, I notice there's a bright flash at the coordinate mentioned above, at the very edge of my wide FOV. Strangest thing is, it appeared brightly in ONLY ONE of the sub frame (that's only 60s out of 194m collected exposure on two consecutive nights)!
Me and my amateur astronomer friends are all stumped, not knowing what it is. 

It shouldn't be meteor/satellite origins because it appears as a bright star in my captured image, no trail whatsoever.
It shouldn't be a supernova because it only appeared in one of the frames of 60s exposure.
I've checked with GCVS and AAVSO too, there's no known variable star at the 4arcmin vicinity, so it shouldn't be any outburst of variable star.
Leaving us with nova, and very high energy cosmic ray as possible candidates.
I'm submitting this possible discovery of a nova to CBAT for validation and follow up observation. If required, I can provide all 143 subs in .NEF format for your scrutiny. 
Please feel free to contact me for any follow up, I'll be gladly to help!
Have a nice day!

And the attachment is the animated .gif of 3 consecutive frames showing the red circle, where a sudden outburst was spotted.

My apology for the bad quality image, after all, it was taken with a beginner scope subjected to multiple levels of optical aberrations, and then there were some thin clouds passing by.

 

I was hoping that you guys can help to suggest/identify what's the outburst, and maybe point me a way to get official confirmation on the suspected object since CBAT is not responsive to my email.

 

Thanks!

[mikeDnight]

As it appeared on only one frame its very unlikely to be a nova as a nova would brighten and fade over several weeks or days. It could be a head on meteor impacting the earths atmosphere as that would be a split second event. Whatever it actually is it is very interesting! 

Mike

[cresskh]

13 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

As it appeared on only one frame its very unlikely to be a nova as a nova would brighten and fade over several weeks or days. It could be a head on meteor impacting the earths atmosphere as that would be a split second event. Whatever it actually is it is very interesting! 

Mike

Could that be a short GRB or maybe even a kilonova?

I'm running out of options, as you can see, it only lasted for less than 60s!

[mikeDnight]

7 minutes ago, cresskh said:

Could that be a short GRB or maybe even a kilonova?

I'm running out of options, as you can see, it only lasted for less than 60s!

Others may be able to shed more light on those possibilities but I've never seen either.

Have you posted your images on Cloudy Nights? You may find more answers there, or you may find things get even more confusing. ☺

Mike