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Hi Folks,
Can anyone tell me the estimated distance in light years of a typical (if there is such a thing!) amateur discovered mag 7 or 8 nova?
Many thanks,
Mick
Mick,
There is no such thing as a “typical Nova”. As an example – two Novae V2467 Cyg & V2468 Cyg, both discovered by Japanese observers Tago & Kaneda. Both have a similar absolute magnitudes Mv -8.7, similar apparent magnitudes at maximum ~7.5V and similar t2 values (the time to lose two magnitudes) of 9 days, yet the former has a distance of 2.5kpc and the latter 6.5 kpc.
Gary
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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
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