V373 Scuti was a nova which appeared in 1975 in the southern constellation of

Scutum The ''scutum'' (; plural ''scuta'') was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, most notably by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century BC. The Romans adopted it when they switched from the military formati ...

. It was announced on June 15, 1975 by Paul Wild at the

Zimmerwald Observatory The Zimmerwald Observatory (german: Observatorium Zimmerwald) is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the AIUB, the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern. Built in 1956, it is located at Zimmerwald, 10 kilometers south of ...

, Switzerland. At the time the magnitude was about 7.9. The peak magnitude of 7.1 occurred a month earlier on May 11. V373SctLightCurve

The

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular frequ ...

of this nova declined as a typical power law following the peak, but showed significant jittery behavior. After about 40–50 days

emission line A spectral line is a dark or bright line in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum, resulting from emission or absorption of light in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies. Spectral lines are often used to identi ...

s began to appear in the spectrum, which allowed measurement of the mean expansion velocity as . The large amplitude flickering as well as other indicators suggest a magnetic influence, making this a candidate intermediate polar system. A luminosity modulation of 258.3 seconds is most likely due to rotation of the white dwarf. The system has an

orbital period The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets ...

of , and the light curve suggests a high

orbital inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:V373 Scuti Novae Intermediate polars Scutum (constellation) 1975 in science Scuti, V373