GRAS Mayhill, New Mexico 11/30/2009 2:36:22 PM
News / Education

Measurements of Nova Eridani 2009

The violent birth of a new star.

Nova Eridani 2009 was discovered on November 25, 2009, by Koichi Itagaki of Yamagata, Japan.

A nova (pl. novae) is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion caused by the accretion of hydrogen onto the surface of a white dwarf star.

 was announced on CBET 2050, issued November 25th by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Itagaki was using an 0.21-meter (8.3-inch) patrol camera, but within 15 minutes he secured a confirming image with an 0.60-meter reflector.


Image Credit: Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero / GRAS

Soon thereafter, Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero of Castellammare di Stabia, Italy, captured the nova with an 0.25-meter f/3.4 reflector operated by Global-Rent-A-Scope near Mayhill, New Mexico. They found it to have an unfiltered CCD magnitude of 8.2 on November 26th near 8:40 Universal Time.

A light curve and a nice animation taken by "PI in the Sky", showing the change in magnitude for the first days after the outburst:

Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero won the Amateur Astronomy Picture of the Day  for November 28 2009 and also made reports of their measurements to Sky and Telescope Magazine Online.

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