------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 2601 2009 Dec 13 17.24UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England.Telephone/FAX(01256)471074Int:+441256471074 INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.CO.UK Backup: gmh@wdcc1.bnsc.rl.ac.uk WORLD WIDE WEB http://www.theastronomer.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- KT ERIDANI: THE PRE-NOVA LIGHTCURVE The nova announced on TA E-Circular 2599 is now designated KT Eri. A. J. Drake et. al., report on Astronomer's Telegram 2331 that following the detection of the possible Nova at mag 8.1 by Yamaoka et al., they carried out a search of Catalina Sky Survey 0.7m data covering the location of this event. Photometry of the source was found with dates between 2005-01-17 and 2009-11-18 UT. The Nova was clearly seen in outburst in images taken on Nov. 18 UT, but was not detected in their CRTS transient search because of very high level saturation. The CSS observations also show that the Nova outburst occurred after 2009 Nov. 10.41 UT. The light curve of this object clearly exhibits variations of approximately 1.8 magnitudes as shown at: http://crts.caltech.edu/Nova2009.html A search for a periodicity within the photometry yields a possible period to be ~210 days. However, this detection does not appear to have high significance. Following the Nova outburst, Ragan et al. obtained photometric and spectroscopic observations of the Nova. They further note that "A distance of 6.5 kpc means that the 15 mag star observed at approximately the same coordinates before the outburst is too bright to be a progenitor of Nova Eri 2009". Although the CSS data is of insufficient resolution to determine whether the observed Nova is indeed blended with the 15th magnitude star, the high level of observed variability suggests that that a much fainter progenitor would have to exhibit a very high level of variability to cause such variations, unless the 15th mag star itself was an unusual type of highly variable star. These two possibilities are unlikely. Furthermore, the degree of variation observed for the 15th mag object is similar to that observed for Nova CSS081007:030559+054715 (discovered by CRTS and characterised by Pejcha et al (2008, ATel 1825) and Prieto et al. (2008 ATel 1835)). For this event, the observed variability in the pre-Nova lightcurve was slightly larger at ~2.5 magnitudes (Drake et al. 2009, Atel 1940), as seen at: http://nesssi.cacr.caltech.edu/catalina/20081007/810071070174103058p.html Also, like KT Eri, this event was observed at high Galactic latitude (-43.7deg). Therefore, the authors conclude that the 15th magnitude star is most likely associated with the observed Nova. SUPERNOVA 2009jg IN ANONYMOUS GALAXY Discovery by CRTS of a possible supernova (CBET 1956): SN 2009 UT R.A. (2000.0) Decl. Mag. Offset 2009jg Sep.22.19 17 40 34.33 +18 42 49.2 15.8 0.3"W, 3.5"S SUPERNOVA 2009jh IN ANONYMOUS GALAXY Discovery by CRTS of a possible supernova (CBET 1958): SN 2009 UT R.A. (2000.0) Decl. Mag. Offset 2009jh Aug. 2.17 14 49 10.09 +29 25 10.4 18.9 7.8"W, 0.1"S Guy M Hurst