ASASSN-16kt was discovered in the constellation of Lupus on September 24 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae with data from a 14″ telescope in Chile.
The discovery magnitude was 9.1 with nothing greater than magnitude 17.5 previously known at that location.
I made a visual estimate of the nova at magnitude 6.7 tonight (September 26) from suburban Adelaide with 7×50 binoculars. At the time of writing, only 8 observations by 6 observers had been submitted to the AAVSO International Database including three Australian amateurs: Terry Bohlsen, Rod Stubbings and myself (highlighted at right), two Argentinians (Gustavo Ballan and the near-omniscient Sebastian Otero) and one Brazillian (Alexandre Amorim).
Other than photometry (visual or image based), amateurs are increasingly taking the spectra of bright novae, and ASASSN-16kt is no exception, with Terry Bohlsen (New South Wales) taking an early spectrum soon after discovery.
These Stellarium screenshots show the location of the nova in Lupus as the south-west sky appeared at around 8pm tonight from Adelaide (wide and narrow field):
The AAVSO finder chart (7.5 degrees) is shown below in a similar orientation:
I was interested to see a request from a researcher, Laura Chomiuk, for high-speed photometry of the nova to:
…to test a recent theoretical prediction of Ken Shen’s: that novae should show fast periodic oscillations in their optical light curves, if gravity waves help expel the envelope.
Time will tell whether the nova has peaked short of naked eye visibility. I hope to make another observation tomorrow night but the forecast does not look favourable for at least a couple of days thereafter.
At least this nova waited for the cloud-dominated winter we’ve just had to pass by.
Leave a Reply