Naked eye Nova in Aquila!

by Steve Gottlieb, Lance Shaw and David Kingsley

Steve Gottlieb

In a message dated 12/2/99, David Kingsley writes:

As you may have already heard, a bright Nova was discovered just yesterday in the constellation Aquila (see www.aavso.org, www.skypub.com, or www.skyhound.com for more information and finder charts).

Nova Aql 1999 #2 is easily visible naked-eye from my light-polluted vicinity (Albany) right now (6:00 PM [PST, 3 December 1999]) as a mag 4.0 star to the NNW of mag 3.4 Delta Aquilae.

Lance Shaw

That is what I had it at last night (using mag 34 delta and mag 45 mu Aquilae for comp stars) and I will be making another estimate here in about five minutes.

David Kingsley

Tonight around 6:45 pm west coast time [PST, 3 December 1999] Aguila Nova 1999 was still visible to naked eye from suburban Palo Alto. It already looked slightly dimmer to me than yesterday, now about mag 4.2. Nova peaks are short and it will be interesting to see if this one has already started coming back down.