Multi-wavelength Photometry and Progenitor Analysis of the Nova V906 Car

Abstract

We present optical and infrared photometry of the classical nova V906 Car, also known as Nova Car 2018 and ASASSN-18fv, discovered by ASASS-SN survey on 16.32 March 2018 UT (MJD 58193.0). The nova reached its maximum on MJD 58222.56 at $V_{\max }=5.84\pm 0.09$ mag and had decline times of $t_{2,V}=26.2$ d and $t_{3,V}=33.0$ d. The data from Evryscope shows that the nova had already brightened to $g^{\prime }\simeq 13$\,mag five days before discovery, as compared to its quiescent magnitude of $g=$20.13$\pm$0.03. The extinction towards the nova, as derived from high resolution spectroscopy, shows an estimate consistent with foreground extinction to the Carina Nebula of $A_V=1.11_{-0.39}^{+0.54}$. The light curve resembles a rare C (cusp) class nova with a steep decline slope of $\alpha =-3.94$ post cusp flare. From the lightcurve decline rate, we estimate the mass of white dwarf to be $M_{WD}$ = $<0.8$M\textsubscript{\(\odot\)}, consistent with $M_{WD}=0.71_{-0.19}^{+0.23}$ derived from modelling the accretion disk of the system in quiescence. The donor star is likely a K-M dwarf of 0.23-0.43\,\Msun, which is being heated by its companion.

13 pages, 10 figures, 7 tables. Accepted to ApJ

References in corpus (6)

• The Gaia mission
• The VST Photometric Halpha Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+)
• A Universal Decline Law of Classical Novae
• Gamma-ray novae as probes of relativistic particle acceleration at non-relativistic shocks
• Evryscope science: exploring the potential of all-sky gigapixel-scale telescopes
• Building the Evryscope: Hardware Design and Performance

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The precessing jets of classical nova YZ Reticuli
• The onset of jets in classical novae