Thu, 10/10/2013 - 18:46
Hello, I am a student/novice astronomer that is working on a photometry project related to v339 Del (Nova Delphini 2013). I was wondering how one would know what the official designation is/was of the star before it went Nova. I would like to include information about the star before it went Nova (distance, radius, apparent mag, etc.) and I'd also like to know if a previoous Nova fro it has been observed in the past.
Best Regards,
James Lindsay
Lone Star College - Montgomery
Insperity Observatory (Humble ISD)
Hi, James,
All stars not known to be variable (and V0339 Del was one of those until its outburst, which answers your other question: had the star been known to have erupted in the past, it would have already been given an official variable star designation and we would be talking about a recurrent nova (NR) instead of a classical fast nova (NA)) have multiple designations because they are included in several catalogues. There is no official designation and, at the same time, they are all "official".
In its VSX entry you can find the star identifications in USNO-A2.0, USNO-B1.0 and CMC14.
Also there you can find that the visual apparent magnitude at quiescence was 16.9.
Best wishes;
Sebastian
Thank You Sebatian.