Superoutburst of the Dwarf Nova QZ Virginis

Dwarf Nova QZ Virginis
Annotated - Image Credit: Dr. Joe Brimacombe


AAVSO Locator Chart for QZ Vir

For all of you variable star fans, there's a new kid on the block - Dwarf Nova QZ Virginis. It was originally discovered by T. Meshkova on Moscow photographic plates in 1944 and had a magnitude range of 12.9 to as little as 14.5 But what is it? Try a cataclysmic variable star - one that our good friends down under caught just for Universe Today readers!

According to recently released AAVSO Special Notice #144, dwarf nova QZ Vir (once known as T Leo) is currently in outburst, and it appears that this outburst is a supermaximum. Says M. Templeton, "The most recent visual estimate of QZ Vir puts the star at visual magnitude 10.2 (JD 2454857.6201; W. Kriebel, Walkenstetten, Germany). Time series photometry by W. Stein (New Mexico, United States) on 2009 Jan 25 indicates the presence of superhumps in the light curve. Observations by P. Schmeer (Saarburecken-Bischmisheim, Germany), E. Morelle (Lauwin-Planque, France), ASAS-3 (Pojmanski 2002, AcA52, 397) and R. Stubbings (Tetoora Road, Vic., Australia) published on VSNET. (T. Kato; vsnet-alert 10980) suggest QZ Vir may have had a short precursor outburst lasting 2-3 days and fading immediately before the rise to supermaximum. All observations, including both visual estimates and CCD time-series photometry, are strongly encouraged at this time."

Of course, it didn't take a lot of encouragement - only some clear skies to get astrophotographer and serious researcher Joe Brimacombe of Southern Galactic to set his telescope towards QZ Virginis and image for us. All we needed to do was provide the following coordinates:
RA: 11 38 26.80 , Dec: +03 22 07.0

As you can see, learning proper stellar coordinates is essential to practicing astronomy. Without them, a stellar field is simply a stellar field as it would be next to impossible to distinguish one background star from the next. While some of us understand what these strange sets of numbers mean - maybe some of our readers don't. Let's take just a moment out from our busy days and learn, shall we?

RA stands for Right Ascension. It is the celestial equivalent of terrestrial longitude. RA's zero point is the Prime Meridian, located in the constellation of Aries where the Sun crosses the celestial equator at the March equinox. Each set of numbers is then measured eastward in three sets - hours, minutes, and seconds, with 24 hours being equivalent to a full circle. Declination, or "Dec" is comparable to latitude, projected onto the celestial sphere, and is measured in degrees north and south of the celestial equator. Points north of the celestial equator have positive declinations, while those to the south have negative declinations. These are also measured in three sets of numbers - degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc.

Now that you know, how do you use them? Chances are, if you have a telescope that has an equatorial mount, you already have the tools in your hands - called "setting circles". These same sets of numbers are waiting right on your telescope for you to set them! Once your telescope is accurately polar aligned, you just use the setting circles to dial in these numbers and you'll be right in the approximate area. For those with electronic setting circles, it's just a matter of inputting the correct coordinates and comparing star fields. Once the general area is found, you simply need to understand how big the field your eyepiece gives and compare it to a star chart - like this one supplied by the AAVSO for QZ Vir.

Make note of your observations and compare the suspect nova to other stars of known magnitude nearby. When you're done - don't keep your observations to yourself! Please report all observations to the AAVSO using the name "QZ Vir" and contribute!

Nova remnant

The nova remnant surrounding the recurrent nova T Pyxidis

A nova remnant is made up of the material either left behind by the gigantic explosion of a star in a nova, or from the bubbles of gas blasted away in a recurrent nova. It has an expansion velocity of around 1000 km/s, and has a lifetime of a few centuries. Nova remnants are much less massive than supernova remnants or planetary nebulae.

Nova

photo: Artist's conception of a white dwarf star accreting hydrogen from a larger companion

A nova (pl. novae or novas) is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion caused by the accretion of hydrogen onto the surface of a white dwarf star. Novae are not to be confused with Type Ia supernovae, or another form of stellar explosion first announced by Caltech in May 2007, Luminous Red Novae.

Occurrence rate, and astrophysical significance:

Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way experiences roughly 30 to 60 novae per year, with a likely rate of about 40. The number of novae discovered each year is much lower, probably due to great distance and observational biases.By comparison, the number of novae discovered each year in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy is much lower; roughly ½ to ⅓ that of the Milky Way.

Spectroscopic observation of nova ejecta nebulae has shown that they are enriched in elements such as helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, and magnesium. The contribution of novae to the interstellar medium is not great; novae supply only 1/50th the amount of material to the Galaxy as supernovae, and only 1/200th that of red giant and supergiant stars.

Recurrent novae like RS Ophiuchi (those with periods on the order of decades) are rare. Astronomers theorize however that most, if not all, novae are recurrent, albeit on time scales ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 years.The recurrence interval for a nova is less dependent on the white dwarf's accretion rate than on its mass; with their powerful gravity, massive white dwarfs require less accretion to fuel an outburst than lower-mass ones. Consequently, the interval is shorter for high-mass white dwarfs.

Historical significance:

The astronomer Tycho Brahe observed the supernova SN 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia, and described it in his book de stella nova (Latin for "concerning the new star"), giving rise to the name nova. In this work he argued that a nearby object should be seen to move relative to the fixed stars, and that the nova had to be very far away. Though this was a supernova and not a classical nova, the terms were considered interchangeable until the 1930s.

Novae as distance indicators:

Novae have some promise for use as standard candles. For instance, the distribution of their absolute magnitude is bimodal, with a main peak at magnitude -7.5, and a lesser one at -8.8. Novae also have roughly the same absolute magnitude 15 days after their peak (-5.5). Comparisons of nova-based distance estimates to various nearby galaxies and galaxy clusters with those done with Cepheid variable stars have shown them to be of comparable accuracy.

Bright novae since 1890:

Year Nova Maximum brightness
1891 T Aurigae +3.8
1898 V1059 Sagittarii +4.5
1899 V606 Aquilae +5.5
1901 GK Persei +0.2
1903 DM Geminorum +4.8
1905 V604 Aquilae +7.3
1910 DI Lacertae +4.6
1912 DN Geminorum +3.5
1918 V603 Aquilae −1.4
1919 HR Lyrae +6.5
1919 V849 Ophiuchi +7.4
1920 V476 Cygni +2.0
1920 T Pyxidis +6.4
1925 RR Pictoris +1.2
1927 EL Aquilae +5.5
1927 XX Tauri +5.9
1933 RS Ophiuchi +4.3
1934 DQ Herculis +1.4
1936 CP Lacertae +2.1
1936 V368 Aquilae +5.0
1939 BT Monocerotis +4.5
1942 V450 Cygni +7.0
1942 CP Puppis +0.3
1943 V500 Aquilae +6.1
1944 T Pyxidis +7.1
1945 V528 Aquilae +7.0
1946 T Coronae Borealis +3.0
1948 CT Serpentis +6.0
1948 V465 Cygni +7.3
1950 DK Lacertae +5.0
1956 RW Ursae Minoris +6.0
1958 RS Ophiuchi +5.0
1960 V446 Herculis +2.8
1963 V533 Herculis +3.0
1964 QZ Aurigae +6.0
1967 T Pyxidis +6.7
1967 HR Delphini +3.7
1967 RS Ophiuchi +5.0
1968 LV Vulpeculae +5.2
1970 FH Serpentis +4.4
1970 V1229 Aquilae +6.7
1970 V1330 Cygni +7.5
1971 IV Cephei +7.0
1975 V1500 Cygni +1.7
1975 V373 Scuti +6.0
1976 NQ Vulpeculae +6.0
1977 HS Sagittae +7.2
1978 V1668 Cygni +6.0
1982 V1370 Aquilae +6.0
1984 PW Vulpeculae +6.4
1984 QU Vulpeculae +5.2
1985 RS Ophiuchi +5.4
1986 V842 Centauri +4.6
1986 OS Andromedae +6.3
1987 V827 Herculis +7.5
1987 QV Vulpeculae +7.0
1991 V838 Herculis +5.0
1992 V1974 Cygni +4.2
1993 V705 Cassiopeiae +5.8
1999 V382 Velorum +2.6
1999 V1494 Aquilae +4.0
2006 RS Ophiuchi +4.5
2007 V1280 Scorpii +3.9

Dwarf nova

photo: Artist's conception of a white dwarf star accreting hydrogen from a larger companion

A dwarf nova is a type of cataclysmic variable, consisting of a close binary star system in which one of the components is a white dwarf, which accretes matter from its companion. They are similar to classical novae in that the white dwarf is involved in periodic outbursts, but the mechanisms are different: classical novae result from the fusion and detonation of accreted hydrogen, while current theory suggests that dwarf novae result from instability in the accretion disk, when gas in the disk reaches a critical temperature that causes a change in viscosity, resulting in a collapse onto the white dwarf that releases large amounts of gravitational potential energy.

Dwarf novae are distinct from classical novae in other ways; their luminosity is lower, and they are typically recurrent on a scale from days to decades.The luminosity of the outburst increases with the recurrence interval as well as the orbital period; recent research with the Hubble space telescope suggests that the latter relationship could make dwarf novae useful standard candles for measuring cosmic distances.

There are currently three known types of dwarf novae:

1. Z Camelopardalis stars, which temporarily "halt" at a particular brightness below their peak.
2. SU Ursae Majoris stars, which have "superoutbursts" which are brighter than the average.
3. U Geminorum stars, which include all dwarf novae outside the previous two categories.

The Star that everyone missed

photo: This image shows the nova V598 Puppis, which was accidentally discovered in the XMM-Newton slew survey. The X-ray contours, which indicate the position of the nova, are overlaid on an optical image taken from the Digitised Sky Survey. ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC (adapted from A. Read et al.), Background: Digitised Sky Survey.

July 18, 2008

XMM-Newton has discovered an exploding star in the Milky Way. Usually that would be important in itself, but this time there is a special twist. Calculations show that the explosion must have been clearly visible to the unaided eye but was missed by the legions of star watchers around the planet.

On October 9, 2007, ESA's orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton was turning from one target to another. As it did so, it passed across a bright source of X-rays that no one was expecting. The source was not listed in any previous X-ray catalogue, yet XMM-Newton was receiving some 50 X-rays every second from this mysterious object.

The only celestial object the XMM-Newton team could find at this location was a faint star, known only by its catalogue number USNO-A2.0 0450-03360039. Acting quickly, Andy Read of the University of Leicester and Richard Saxton of ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Spain, arranged for an astronomical telegram to be circulated across the Internet, informing other astronomers of the newly-discovered X-ray source.Astronomers using the 6.5-meter Magellan-Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, found that USNO-A2.0 0450-03360039 had dramatically brightened by more than 600 times. Analyzing the light from the source meant that they could classify the object as a nova.

Novae occur when a compact star, called a white dwarf, feeds off the gas of a nearby companion star. When sufficient gas builds up on the white dwarf, a nuclear reaction begins releasing large quantities of energy, prompting the white dwarf to shoot up in brightness.

But there was a puzzle. The incandescent explosion does not immediately release X-rays; the expanding cloud of debris created in the detonation temporarily masks them. As this clears, the X-rays shine through. So, for XMM-Newton to see this nova, the explosion must have taken place many days before. Yet, no one had reported seeing it.Usually, dedicated amateur and professional astronomers find novae by regularly sweeping the night sky for stars that suddenly brighten. This one, it seemed, had slipped the net. Saxton contacted the robotic survey project ASAS and asked them to check their data. They found the nova. It had taken place on June 5, 2007 and had been clearly visible, even to the unaided eye.

"Anyone who went outside that night and looked towards the constellation of Puppis would have seen it," says Saxton.

The nova is now officially designated V598 Puppis and is one of the brightest for almost a decade, doubling the irony that it was not spotted during its brilliant peak. As news of it spread, the global effort to track its fading light became intense. "Suddenly there was all this data being collected about the star. For variable star work like this, the contribution of the amateur community can be at least as important as that from the professionals," says Read.

Thanks to XXM-Newton, this story has a happy ending, but it does make astronomers wonder whether there are other discoveries going unnoticed too.