Novae distances

Forums Variable Stars Novae Distances Novae distances

#577098
Mick Crook
Participant

Many thanks Gary…. wow, that’s a big distance range for novae with a similar absolute magnitude! That does surprise me as I thought they might behave in a similar fashion to Sne in that they could be used as “standard candles” . The reason I asked is that I have been considering the distribution of detected novae and, as we appear to lie between two major spiral arms in the Milky Way, I would have expected more novae to occurr in the outer arm than are currently being found. I was anticipating that, although novae occurring toward the galactic centre would be obviously more numerous, they would be much fainter than mag 7-8, but  this is obviously not the case! Thanks for helping me get my head around this Gary!

Mick