Typically, when you need the Spectra-L200 it's lying in bits on the bench! With all the component testing for the new batch, being done by Mark at JTW Astronomy, it hampers my own observing.
Having said that, I'll start re-assembling it tonight and set it up at least with the Genesis....
Got up last night, and was clouded out....
Let's not get overly concerned about ego's and "big toys" syndrome....we can all contribute to the best of our abilities...that should not stop us trying to produce the best data we can - the basic methodology is sound and should be used.
The latest news is that professional spectra have identified the nova as an FeII type....
ATEL #5639 ATEL #5639
Title: Spectroscopic observations of Nova Cen 2013
Author: L. Izzo (Sapienza Università di Roma and ICRANet), E. Mason
(INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste), L. Vanzi, J. M. Fernandez,
N. Espinoza, K. Helminiak (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile),
M. della Valle (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte)
Queries:
luca.izzo@gmail.com
Posted: 8 Dec 2013; 12:39 UT
Subjects:Optical, Nova
We report optical spectroscopy observations of the recent outburst of Nova
Cen 2013 = PNV J13544700-5909080, obtained with the 0.5 m telescope at
the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile Observatory with the PUCHEROS
echelle spectrograph on 2013 December 6.33. The observations cover the
spectral range between 425.5 and 726.0 nm at a resolution of \sim 0.025
at 500 nm.
The observations shows typical features of Fe II spectra, with the Fe II
5169, which is blended with Mg I (2), as the brightest non-Balmer line.
We detect many other absorption lines and P-Cygni associated with Fe II
lines of the multiplets (74, 54, 49, 48, 46, 38, 37 and 27) and possible
multiplets (43, 41, 25 and 20) as well. We report also the presence of
lower ionization transitions as Ti II (70 69, and 39) and Cr II (44 and
30), and other transitions as Si II 6347 and 6371 AA, from detection of
their P-Cygni absorptions. The velocities measured from the P-Cygni profiles
for all these lines are v_{rad} \sim 408 +- 10 km/s. Similar velocities
are measured for the Na I doublet absorptions.
The H-alpha line shows a flat P-Cygni profile with absorption extending
up to -1300 km/s, while the Doppler broadening of the emission line extends
to +700 km/s. The profile is not structured and shows a triangular shape.
On the other hand, the P-Cygni profile of the H-beta is more sharp, with
minimum at around -450 km/s, showing an other possible minimum at -1200
km/s, which we however associate with the presence of Cr II (30), detected
also at 4824 and 4876 AA.
It is interesting to note that from the widths of the Na I doublet, we
have preliminarily estimated an E(B-V) = 0.11 +. 0.08 from Poznanski et
al. (MNRAS, (2012), 426, 1465) and E(B-V) = 0.14 from Munari & Zwitter,
(A&A, (1997), 318, 269), which suggest a low extinction and a not large
distance for the nova. We will continue to monitor the spectroscopic evolution
of the nova in the following weeks and suggest to continue to follow-up
the nova, particularly at different wavelengths.
