Abstract
NOVA SAGITTARII No. 4.—Circular 164 of the Harvard College Observatory announces the discovery of yet another nova in the constellation Sagittarius. This object was found by Miss Cannon during a rapid comparison of various photographs of the Harvard Map of the Sky on Map 43. It appears on eleven photographs taken between May 22 and July 9, 1901, but no trace of it can be found on 148 other plates taken in 1892, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, and each year from 1900 to 1910 inclusive; each of these shows the C.D.M. star —27° 12411, of magnitude 9.7, with which the nova at its maximum was equal in photographic magnitude. The exact date of the nova's appearance cannot be fixed, but the greatest observed brightness was 10.3 on May 22, 1901, and it is not shown on a plate taken on April 10, 1901, although this plate shows a fourteenth-magnitude star 0.3′ south of the nova. The fluctuations of brightness appear to be somewhat similar to those of Nova Persei (2). It is of interest to note that seven novae are now known to have appeared in the region covered by Map 43.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 86, 495 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/086495a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/086495a0