IC 1613

We want to present a follow-up investigation of a discovered nova in the dwarf galaxy IC 1613 found by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search program (LOSS) on 2015-09-10.840. This nova was independently observed during long exposures by our team member R. Pölzl.

The initial confirmation of this object was reported by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBET 4186). It was also communicated in ATEL 8061. This object can be also found as “PNV J01044358+0203419” or “PS15byt”. The spectrum shows a blue continuum, along with strong Balmer emission lines including H-alpha and H-beta, confirming that the object is an extragalactic nova. The IAU also mentioned, that followup observations for this object have not yet been reported so far. A further statement of “The Astronomers Telegram” (ATEL 8061) is, that “The transient appears coincident with a source at 01:04:43.56 +02:03:42.0 (J2000) in the catalogue of stars in the IC 1613 field published by Udalski et al. (2001), who report it to be at magnitude V = 22.06 and I = 21.53. We conclude that PNV J01044358+0203419 is an extragalactic Fe II nova, and likely resides in IC 1613.”

Investigations of this stellar source by the TBG-group show, that the identified object could be comparable with a planetary nebula found in 2005 by L. Magrini et al. which is called “IC 1613 PN2” (link to publication).

Regarding this possibility we measured independently the exact position of the nova with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR12 as well as with the astrometry-software “Astrometrica”. After comparing the positions of nova and IC 1613 PN2 we found differences of about 2-3 arc seconds between both objects.

Furthermore we compared the location of the nova and the PN within an image. This was possible due to a zoomable image of IC 1613, exposed with the VLT from ESO (https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1603a/). This image shows the needed resolution to surely identify the nova as well as the discovered IC 1613 PN2. For comparison with IC 1613 PN2 we took the image from the above mentioned publication. The listed images showed clearly that PN and nova cannot be the same object!

Nova “PNV J01044358+0203419” in IC 1613, exposured by R. Pölzl. See also the following images #2, #3 and #4.

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