NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2013 Aug 16, 12:02 -0700
There's also good coverage here:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/Bright-Nova-in-Delphinus-219631281.html
Using the nice finder chart there, I saw it with binoculars when it was still around magnitude 5.7 and brightening steadily. If you've never seen a nova, be advised that it looks like any other star. The only spectacle, such as it is, is the gradual change in brightness over several days.
A plainly visible naked eye nova (brighter than mag. 5.5, let's say) is a once-in-three-years event roughly. If this one makes it to magnitude 3.0 or brighter, which is possible over the weekend, then that's more like a once-in-fifteen-years event.
Dave, you wrote:
"Now up to 4th magnitude. Be the first ever to get an LOP using this star!"
Ha! Yep. :) I do believe that this would apply also to 99% of 4th magnitude stars, novae or otherwise. If anyone wants to take up the challenge, just for fun, the navigational coordinates would be
Dec: 20° 49.0' N,
SHA: 53° 57.7'
(corrected for precession, nutation, aberration from epoch 2000 coordinates).
-FER
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