Strange Quarks

John Seach discovered a nova in Centaurus on September 22 2025 (see AAVSO alert notice 906), which appears to have peaked at magnitude 6.4 and is now fading below magnitude 8. Its pre-outburst magnitude was 16.7.

The images above were taken with my Seestar S50, the first resulting from additive stacking of 39 images on the S50. The second shows the nova (V1935 Cen) in cross hairs after further processing and median stacking in Tycho Tracker.

V1935 Cen is located near Alpha Centauri (aka Rigel Kentaurus) as shown in these Stellarium images for approximately 8:30pm Adelaide time (ACST).

Photometry (with Tycho Tracker) from the S50 images gave a visual band magnitude of around 8.1 at 8:15pm on September 26.

The AAVSO finder chart below must be rotated 90 degrees clockwise to match the field above. The bright star bottom is Alpha Centauri.

As I write this (the morning of September 27), 19 observations have been submitted to AAVSO, giving this early light curve, with my observation in cross hairs. Observations are visual estimates from telescopes of binoculars (shown as black) or visual band photometry from imaging devices (e.g. DSLRs, CCDs).

This entry was posted on September 27, 2025 at 9:36 am and is filed under Astronomy, Variable Stars. 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.