As with some novae I have followed in the past I have been fascinated by the colours displayed as they develop. In particular one in Vulpecula (1960/70s) came to display an intense mauve/magenta hue (pink to some). If I recall right this was ascribed as it going through the “nebular phase”. More recently one in either Cygnus or Cassiopeia became the most intensely blue star I’ve ever seen!
While conceding the subjectivity of colour perception/judgement and so on (and differences with others’ monitors and such) a few details about these impressions……
Aug 15: Creamy Yellow. Aug 19: slightly more Yellow. Aug 26: Peach! Aug 30: Buttercup Yellow.
Early Sep. it started to display hues that I struggled to name but opted for Bronze/Coppery-Yellows.
Then it reddened markedly and even so could not quite equate it to the redness of carbon stars V Aql or of X Sge which was more near the nova’s brightness then.
The last (Oct 5) observation showed a more definite difference to X Sge: it was now fainter than X but looked slightly more toward red-violet.
David
[Our thanks to David for allowing us to repost this from the CloudyNights.com sketching forum. –Jeremy]
David,
Excellent post.
Frank 🙂