Recurrent Nova RS Ophiuchi is in OUTBURST
Recurrent Nova RS Ophiuchi is in OUTBURST!
It is news of the last few hours that the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi is in outburst. For first time in 15 years, the famous recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi has erupted into naked-eye visibility. The last large outburst of RS Oph occurred in Feb. 2006, when it reached visual mag 4.5.
As late as August 08.48, 2021, the star was still around magnitude 11.5, where it spends most of its time with only minor fluctuations. But just few hours later it was found in outburst by two amateur astronomers.
This outburst has been discovered by K. Geary (Ireland) that reported it at visual magnitude 6.0 on Aug. 8.93 UT and independently by A. Amorim (Brazil) who provided the following visual magnitude estimates: Aug. 8.91, 5.0 (10x50 binoculars); 8.95, 5.0 (naked eye).
Here at Telescope Live, thanks to our telescopes located all over the world, we have been able to perform very soon some follow-up of RS OPHIUCHI 2021 outburst. We imaged it through our TEL 0.1-m f/3.6 astrograph + CCD located in the Heaven's Mirror Observatory, Australia (MPC code Q56). On our images (see below) taken on August 09.42, 2020 we can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart (approximate R-filtered magnitude about +4.8; images were saturated in 10-second exposures).
by Ernesto Guido, Marco Rocchetto, Adriano Valvasori, Chantal Nassef