RS Oph spectral journey

[Merlin66]

The deep sky guys have mentioned how red this recurrent nova was recently.
Well the spectrum tells the story.....
This is a compilation of RS Oph spectra taken over the past month.
It shows the dramatic increase of the H alpha line from x0.5 the continuum to x120 Almost a two hundred times increase:eyepop::eyepop::eyepop:
(This data was collected by my mate Jean-Bruno Desrosiers, in Quebec)

[Rob_K]

Good stuff Ken and well done to your mate! RS Oph has been very interesting to follow - my last spectrum was 27 Aug and I compiled a gif of the spectra between 9 Aug and that date. These spectra are uncorrected for continuum in order to show the 'collapse' of the continuum. I hope animated gifs work on IIS, suppose there's one way to find out! :P

Anyway, I might give it another try tonight, hoping it's not too faint for me now.

Cheers -

[Rob_K]

Last night was good. The nova is now in the mag 9s and generally a star of that magnitude is out of range for me spectroscopically. But because virtually all the visible light is coming from 3 narrow emission lines (and dominated by one, H-alpha), the spectrum was still easily gettable. Effectively, the low-res spectrum is one bright dot & two fainter ones!

The nova itself is now very red, in consequence of the dominance of the H-alpha emission.

Cheers -