V500 Aquilae also known as Nova Aquilae 1943 was a nova which appeared in the constellation Aquila, very near the star

Altair Altair is the brightest star in the constellation of Aquila and the twelfth-brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Aquilae, which is Latinised from α Aquilae and abbreviated Alpha Aql ...

, in 1943. It was discovered by

Cuno Hoffmeister Cuno Hoffmeister (2 February 1892 – 2 January 1968) was a German astronomer, observer and discoverer of variable stars, comets and minor planets, and founder of Sonneberg Observatory. Born in Sonneberg in 1892 to Carl and Marie Hoffmeister, C ...

photographic plates Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography, and were still used in some communities up until the late 20th century. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinn ...

taken at

Sonneberg Observatory Sonneberg Observatory (german: Sternwarte Sonneberg) is an astronomical observatory and was formerly an institute of the Academy of Science in the German Democratic Republic. It was founded in 1925 by Cuno Hoffmeister and is located in Sonneberg, ...

on 5 September 1943, when it had a

photographic magnitude Photographic magnitude ( or ) is a measure of the relative brightness of a star or other astronomical object as imaged on a photographic film emulsion with a camera attached to a telescope. An object's apparent photographic magnitude depends on i ...

of 12. It reached its peak brightness sometime between 13 April 1943 when it was fainter than photographic magnitude 13.5, and 2 May 1943 when its photographic magnitude was 6.55 (6.1 visual magnitude). V500AqlLightCurve

V500 Aquilae's brightness dropped by 3 magnitudes from its peak in 42 days, making it a "fast" nova. All novae are binary stars, with a "donor" star orbiting a

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 ...

. The two stars are so close to each other that matter is transferred from the donor to the white dwarf. Because the stars are separated by a distance comparable to the radius of the donor star, novae are often

eclipsing binaries A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in wh ...

, and V500 Aquilae does show eclipses. The eclipses, first seen in 1994 at the European Southern Observatory, have a depth of about 0.4 magnitudes, and the orbital period is . In 1984 a small (radius 2.0 arc second)

nova remnant A nova remnant is made up of the material either left behind by a sudden explosive fusion eruption by classical novae, or from multiple ejections by recurrent novae. Over their short lifetimes, nova shells show expansion velocities of around 1000& ...

surrounding V500 Aquilae and expanding at 1380 km/sec, was discovered using the

Hale Telescope The Hale Telescope is a , 3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, de ...

. The expansion of that remnant has been used to derive a distance estimate of 4900

parsec 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 ...

References

External links

www.tsm.toyama.toyama.jp

V0500 Aql

GCVS V0500 Aql

V0500 Aql

Image V500 Aquilae

Simbad
{{DEFAULTSORT:V500 Aquilae Novae Aquila (constellation) 1943 in science Aquilae, V500