COMMISSION 27 OF THE I. A. U.
         INFORMATION BULLETIN ON VARIABLE STARS
                     Number 1706

                                    Konkoly Observatory
                                    Budapest
                                    1979 November 19


               THE 1978 NOVA IN Sgr


The object at alpha=18h14m20.6s, delta=-27d59'51" (1900) was discovered by
Stenholm and Lundstrom (1979) to have had the spectrum of a declining nova on
an objective prism plate taken 1978 Mar. 8. The star is visible on Maria
Mitchell plates taken between 1978 June 30 and 1978 Oct. 3 but not seen in
1977 or 1979 on plates with a limiting magnitude near m_pg=15. There are no
plates of the field between 1977 Oct. 1 and 1978 June 30 or between 1978 Oct.
3 and 1979 May 2.

                             [FIGURE 1]

   Fig. 1. A photographic light curve for the 1978 Nova in Sgr

The photographic light curve is shown in Fig. 1.  Magnitudes are from eye
estimates relative to the sequence stars identified on the finding chart, Fig.
2. Preliminary magnitudes of the sequence stars are listed in Table 1. They
are based on photographic transfer from photoelectric B magnitudes (Bok and Bok
1960) and photographic IPg magnitudes (Pickering et al. 1923) in Selected Area
158, transformed to m_pg according to:

m_pg=B-0.2

and m_pg=12.18+1.34(IPg - 12).

The first relation is a simple zero-point adjustment. The second comes from a
linear least squares fit involving five of the seven faintest stars which the
two sequences have in common (leaving out two discordant red stars).

Table  1

a     12.2m
b     12.7
c     13.0
d     13.6
e     14.2

                         [FIGURE 2]

   Fig. 2. Field of the 1978 Nova in Sgr. Preliminary magnitudes
   of the sequence stars are given in Table 1. The star marked
   "A" is CoD -28d14475.

I am grateful to Earthwatch, of Belmont, Massachusetts, for support of this
work and to volunteers Clifford Spohn for estimates of the nova and Mary
Fletcher for the photographic transfer.


EMILIA P. BELSERENE
Maria Mitchell Observatory
Nantucket, Mass. 02554 USA

References:

Bok, B.J., Bok, P.F. 1960, Monthly Notices of the R.A.S. 121, 531 [BIBCODE 1960MNRAS.121..531B ]
Pickering, E.C., Kapteyn, J.C., van Rhijn, P.J. 1923, Harv. Ann. 102 [BIBCODE 1923AnHar.102....1P ]
Stenholm, B., Lundstrom, I. 1979, IAUC 3411 [BIBCODE 1979IAUC.3411....2S ]