A Hubble Space Telescope Survey for Novae in M87. I. Light and Color Curves, Spatial Distributions and the Nova Rate

Abstract

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the central part of M87 over a 10 week span, leading to the discovery of 32 classical novae and nine fainter, likely very slow and/or symbiotic novae. In this first in a series of papers we present the M87 nova finder charts, and the light and color curves of the novae. We demonstrate that the rise and decline times, and the colors of M87 novae are uncorrelated with each other and with position in the galaxy. The spatial distribution of the M87 novae follows the light of the galaxy, suggesting that novae accreted by M87 during cannibalistic episodes are well-mixed. Conservatively using only the 32 brightest classical novae we derive a nova rate for M87: $363_{-45}^{+33}$ novae/yr. We also derive the luminosity-specific classical nova rate for this galaxy, which is $7.88_{-2.6}^{+2.3}/yr/10^{10}{L}_{\odot }{,}_K$. Both rates are 3-4 times higher higher than those reported for M87 in the past, and similarly higher than those reported for all other galaxies. We suggest that most previous ground-based surveys for novae in external galaxies, including M87, miss most faint, fast novae, and almost all slow novae near the centers of galaxies.

116 pages, 17 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series Minor updates, conclusions unchanged

References in corpus (5)

• Growing White Dwarfs to the Chandrasekhar Limit: The Parameter Space of the Single Degenerate SNIa Channel
• OGLE Atlas of Classical Novae I. Galactic Bulge Objects
• Exploring the Role of Globular Cluster Specific Frequency on the Nova Rates in Three Virgo Elliptical Galaxies
• Search for cold gas along radio lobes in the cooling core galaxies MS0735.6+7421 and M87
• Discovery of thirteen novae candidates in M87

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• The Masses and Accretion Rates of White Dwarfs in Classical and Recurrent Novae
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• A population of heavily reddened, optically missed novae from Palomar Gattini-IR: Constraints on the Galactic nova rate
• On a century of extragalactic novae and the rise of the rapid recurrent novae
• Multiwavelength observations of V407 Lupi (ASASSN-16kt) --- a very fast nova erupting in an intermediate polar
• A Hubble Space Telescope Survey for Novae in M87. II. Snuffing out the Maximum Magnitude - Rate of Decline Relation for Novae as a Non-Standard Candle, and a Prediction of the Existence of Ultrafast Novae
• The Galactic Nova Rate: Estimates from the ASAS-SN and Gaia Surveys
• The supersoft X-ray transient ASASSN-16oh as a thermonuclear runaway without mass ejection
• The January 2016 eruption of recurrent nova LMC 1968
• The Rate and Spatial Distribution of Novae in M31 as Determined by a Twenty-Year Survey
• Multi-wavelength Photometry and Progenitor Analysis of the Nova V906 Car
• The Hubble Catalog of Variables (HCV)
• Multi-wavelength Observations of the 2015 Nova in the Local Group Irregular Dwarf Galaxy IC 1613
• Novae in M51: a New, Much Higher Rate from Multi-epoch HST Data
• A Hubble Space Telescope Survey for Novae in the Globular Clusters of M87
• A Hubble Space Telescope survey for novae in M87. III. Are novae good standard candles 15 days after maximum brightness?
• A Survey of Novae in M83
• AT 2017fvz: a nova in the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822
• Discovering novae in early-type galaxies with MUSE: A chance find in NGC 1404, and twelve more candidates from an archival search
• A Century of Novae in the Large Magellanic Cloud