PNV J18025353-2914151 (Sgr) - True identity of this nova

PNV J18025353-2914151 (in Sagittarius) was discovered as a new object in outburst on January 27, 2024 by Yuji Nakamura, and published as such in the CBAT TOCP page.

Since it was only 1.2" away from the bright small amplitude variable red giant OGLE-BLG-LPV-190334, discovered by OGLE in 2013, they were assumed to be the same object, although that meant a very small amplitude for a nova.

It was later confirmed spectroscopically by J. Strader et al. in ATel #16428 and they also assumed that the red variable and the nova were the same star.

However, Andrew Pearce and Kirill Sokolovsky measured Andrew's images of the outbursting object and found that it was 1.1" away from the red star (which has a V magnitude of 15.7).

Confirmation came from Gaia, who detected the nova and published it in its alert stream as Gaia24ani on February 18, 2024.


This means that we had to create a new entry for the nova in VSX, and it is important that those of you who may have been using the name OGLE-BLG-LPV-190334 to report it, stop doing so and adopt the primary name PNV J18025353-2914151 from now on.

The nova has been rather quiet these past two weeks, hovering around V= 12.
Observations are encouraged, knowing that you will be measuring the light of both the nova and the red giant, and that, as the nova fades back to quiescence, the contribution from the other star will become a real problem...

Best wishes,
Sebastian