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). It was visible to the naked eye from the Palo Alto tonight about 6:45 pm.
The newly visible star is a couple degrees NW of delta Aquila (the star along the central stem of the eagle). The distance between Delta Aquila and the star being called Nova Aquila 1999 No. 2 provided an interesting parallel to the distance between the two bright stars further north in the head of the eagle (Altair and Tarazed).
I pulled the HB Astroatlas and a pair of binoculars out from the trunk of the car and made some crude estimates of relative brightness of the Nova based on several surrounding stars on the BM series of magnitude charts. Depending on the pairs of stars I used for comparison, I ended up with preliminary estimates of mag 3.8 or mag 4.0 for the Nova as of tonight.
I am looking forward to watching how the magnitude evolves over the next several days. Bright naked eye Novas don't come along very often and this one should be fun to watch!!