Nova in Cas

[Pixies]

I'll say very close to HD 220167. Mag 7.2

[Stu]

I took a few smartphone shots of the nova last night, I was somewhere a bit darker so I had some much better views than normal.

[PeterW]

Darker @Stu, you must have got quite a long way south to escape the ever present twilight?!

Peter

[Stu]

7 hours ago, PeterW said:

Darker @Stu, you must have got quite a long way south to escape the ever present twilight?!

Peter

I was actually ‘ooop Norf’, well, Bakewell in Derbyshire to be precise. Skies much better than home, it’s so nice to actually be able to see objects like M13 and M27 in the finderscope! Unheard of back home. Even managed M51 in the 4”, twin cores and visible haloes surrounding them, nice.

[Captain Scarlet]

Tonight, for me, with my usual 15x56 Zeiss, impossible to separate in brightness from HD220167, so 7.1-7.2 by my estimation.

M

Edited May 31, 2021 by Captain Magenta

[John]

17 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

Tonight, for me, with my usual 15x56 Zeiss, impossible to separate in brightness from HD220167, so 7.1-7.2 by my estimation.

M

Had a quick look with my 12 inch dob earlier. Same for estimate for me.

It's still very much "with us" isn't it ?

 

Edited June 1, 2021 by John

[Davey-T]

Hoping to see it shortly once it drags itself clear of the LP.

Dave

[JeremyS]

The BAA VSS light curve indicates the brightening trend of the nova has continued over the last week. 

May 31.208  7.24 TG (Gary Poyner)

May 31.995  7.1 vis (Paul Abel)

[Stu]

SGL version here. My trend line is looking fairly useless, so I will likely abandon it in favour of just the scatter graph. I don’t think the ‘join the dots’ line helps much?

[PeterW]

@Stu you just need to use a higher order polynomial fit….. always “works” with enough terms…..

Peter

[Stu]

Just now, PeterW said:

@Stu you just need to use a higher order polynomial fit….. always “works” with enough terms…..

Peter

Excel ran out at 6th order!

[PeterW]

No fair… maybe need some nurbs or Mr Chebyshev….

Plotting the whole light curve, looks like some subtle little lumps may have occurred, regular measurements are definitely important.

Peter

 

[Stu]

24 minutes ago, PeterW said:

No fair… maybe need some nurbs or Mr Chebyshev….

Plotting the whole light curve, looks like some subtle little lumps may have occurred, regular measurements are definitely important.

Peter

 

Yes, we are definitely ‘gappier’ than Jeremy’s data. Fewer people and poor weather I guess.

[laudropb]

31 minutes ago, Stu said:

Yes, we are definitely ‘gappier’ than Jeremy’s data. Fewer people and poor weather I guess.

Also the very bright summer sky is making it more difficult to estimate magnitude, although I did get a reasonable value of 7.1 last night.

[JeremyS]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

SGL version here. My trend line is looking fairly useless, so I will likely abandon it in favour of just the scatter graph. I don’t think the ‘join the dots’ line helps much?

Plot looks good @Stu👍🏻
Shows Rhea recent brightening trend.

I prefer your third plot without lines.

[John]

Clear night and another brightness estimate data point from me, this time using a 102mm refractor at 28x magnification. I feel that the nova is really quite close to the brightness of the star HD 220057 which is magnitude 6.9. So I'd say mag 7.0 for the nova ?

 

[Pixies]

2am, with new 80mm Vixen and x35.

I'd say it's as bright as HD 220057, so mag 6.9

[Stu]

Slow brightening continues, thanks both.

[laudropb]

Clear sky and good seeing last night. Estimated at mag 7.0

[Captain Scarlet]

Same brightness to me tonight as HD 220057, making it 6.94-7 I reckon. Zeiss 15x56 bins.

Also discovered a top tip. With these fancy eyepieces which have both 2” and 1.25” nose pieces, it really helps to remove the 1.25” end-cap to be able to see things. Cost me about 10 mins tonight 🙄 trying to work out why I couldn’t see anything.

[John]

5 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

Also discovered a top tip. With these fancy eyepieces which have both 2” and 1.25” nose pieces, it really helps to remove the 1.25” end-cap to be able to see things. Cost me about 10 mins tonight 🙄 trying to work out why I couldn’t see anything....

I've done that more than once with an Ethos eyepiece.........

[Stu]

7 hours ago, Captain Magenta said:

Same brightness to me tonight as HD 220057, making it 6.94-7 I reckon. Zeiss 15x56 bins.

Also discovered a top tip. With these fancy eyepieces which have both 2” and 1.25” nose pieces, it really helps to remove the 1.25” end-cap to be able to see things. Cost me about 10 mins tonight 🙄 trying to work out why I couldn’t see anything.

🤣🤣 been there, done that, felt silly 😜 😜

[JeremyS]

Gradual brightening continues. Now brighter that 7.0.

[John]

Clearly the white dwarf is still busy accreting material from it's larger companion.

Hopefully I'll get another look this evening.

Edited June 6, 2021 by John

[John]

100mm refractor at 37.5x. The Nova seems to lie somewhere between the stars HD 220057 and HD 220819 in brightness tonight. Those are listed as magnitude 6.9 and 6.6 respectively so I'll go for magnitude 6.75 for the nova