Strange Quarks

I had my first glimpse of Nova Centauri 2013 (PNV J13544700-5909080) at 5:14 am local (Adelaide) time today, near dawn, as the sky was starting to turn blue.

All I can really say from that hurried observation, given the finder chart I was using, is that it was brighter than the magnitude 4.33 comparison star (JD 2456631.28102, >4.33). I used  7×50 binoculars.

What an awesome sight!

Tomorrow morning I need to be better prepared by:

1. being outside about 45 mins earlier;
2. using additional comparison stars from the AAVSO alert notice.

This entry was posted on December 4, 2013 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Astronomy, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.