__NOTOC__

V1500 Cygni or Nova Cygni 1975 was a bright

nova A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...

occurring in 1975 in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

Cygnus. It had the second highest intrinsic brightness of any nova of the 20th century, exceeded only by CP Puppis in 1942. V1500 Cygni was discovered shining at an

apparent brightness Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's ...

of magnitude 3.0 by Minoru Honda of Kurashiki, Japan on 29 August 1975. It had brightened to magnitude 1.7 on the next day, and then rapidly faded. It remained visible to the naked eye for about a week, and 680 days after reaching maximum the star had dimmed by 12.5 magnitudes. V1500CygLocation

It is an AM Herculis type star, consisting of a

red dwarf ''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. T ...

secondary depositing a stream of material onto a highly magnetized

white dwarf A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...

primary. The distance of the V1500 Cygni was calculated in 1977 by the

McDonald Observatory McDonald Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near unincorporated community of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States. The facility is located on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, with additional facil ...

at 1.95

kiloparsecs The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (au), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, an ...

(6,360 light years). Additionally, V1500 Cyg was the first asynchronous polar to be discovered. This distinction refers to the fact that the white dwarf's spin period is slightly different from the binary orbital period.

References

External links

* * * {{Authority control Novae Cygnus (constellation) 1975 in science Cygni, V1500 Polars (cataclysmic variable stars)

See also

References

Further reading

External links