The 2019 Outburst of the 2005 Classical Nova V1047 Cen: A Record Breaking Dwarf Nova Outburst or a New Phenomenon?

Creators: Aydil, E.; Sokolovsky, K. V.; Bright, J. S.; Tremou, E.; Nyamai, M. M.; Evans, A.; Strader, J.; Chomiuk, L.; Myers, G.; Hambsch, F-J.; Page, K. L.; Buckley, D. A. H.; Woodward, C. E.; Walter, F. M.; Mróz, P.; Vallely, P. J.; Geballe, T. R.; Banerjee, D. P. K.; Gehrz, R. D.; Fender, R. P.; Gromadzki, M.; Kawash, A.; Knigge, C.; Mukai, K.; Munari, U.; Orio, M.; Ribeiro, V. A. R. M.; Sokoloski, J. L.; Starrfield, S.; Udalski, A.; Woudt, P. A.

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the 2019 outburst of the cataclysmic variable V1047 Cen, which hosted a classical nova eruption in 2005. The peculiar outburst occurred 14 yr after the classical nova event and lasted for more than 400 days, reaching an amplitude of around 6 magnitudes in the optical. Early spectral follow-up revealed what could be a dwarf nova (accretion disk instability) outburst. However, the outburst duration, high-velocity (>2000 km s⁻¹) features in the optical line profiles, luminous optical emission, and presence of prominent long-lasting radio emission together suggest a phenomenon more exotic and energetic than a dwarf nova outburst. The outburst amplitude, radiated energy, and spectral evolution are also not consistent with a classical nova eruption. There are similarities between V1047 Cen's 2019 outburst and those of classical symbiotic stars, but pre-2005 images of the field of V1047 Cen indicate that the system likely hosts a dwarf companion, implying a typical cataclysmic variable system. Based on our multiwavelength observations, we suggest that the outburst may have started with a brightening of the disk due to enhanced mass transfer or disk instability, possibly leading to enhanced nuclear shell burning on the white dwarf, which was already experiencing some level of quasi-steady shell burning. This eventually led to the generation of a wind and/or bipolar, collimated outflows. The 2019 outburst of V1047 Cen appears to be unique, and nothing similar has been observed in a typical cataclysmic variable system before, hinting at a potentially new astrophysical phenomenon.

Additional Information

Support for this work was provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2- 51501.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. We thank B. Schaefer for useful discussion. We thank the AAVSO observers from around the world who contributed their magnitude measurements to the AAVSO International Database used in this work. E.A., L.C., and K.V.S. acknowledge NSF award AST-1751874, NASA award 11-Fermi 80NSSC18K1746, and a Cottrell fellowship of the Research Corporation. J.S. was supported by the Packard Foundation. D.A.H.B. gratefully acknowledges the receipt of research grants from the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa. P.A.W. kindly acknowledges the National Research Foundation and the University of Cape Town. K.L.P. acknowledges funding from the UK Space Agency. Nova research at Stony Brook University has been made possible by NSF award AST-1611443. M.G. is supported by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101004719. A part of this work is based on observations made with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), with the Large Science Programme on transients 2018-2-LSP-001 (PI: DAHB). Polish participation in SALT is funded by grant No. MNiSW DIR/WK/2016/07. This paper was partially based on observations obtained at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações (MCTI/LNA) do Brasil, the US National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU). The OGLE project has received funding from the National Science Centre, Poland, grant MAESTRO 2014/14/A/ST9/00121 to AU. The CHIRON and Andicam instruments are managed by the Todd Henry and the SMARTS Consortium. The MeerKAT telescope is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation. We acknowledge the use of the ilifu cloud computing facility—www.ilifu.ac.za, a partnership between the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Stellenbosch, Sol Plaatje University, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. The ilifu facility is supported by contributions from the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA—a partnership between the University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria and the University of the Western Cape), the Computational Biology division at UCT and the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA). This research is based in part on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). D.P.K.B. is supported by a CSIR Emeritus Scientist grant-in-aid, which is being hosted by the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. This work is based in part on observations made with the NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA is jointly operated by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc. (USRA), under NASA contract NNA17BF53C, and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under DLR contract 50 OK 0901 to the University of Stuttgart. Financial support for CEW/RDG related to this work was provided by NASA through award SOF07-0005 issued by USRA to the University of Minnesota. This publication makes use of data products from the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which is a joint project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona. NEOWISE is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. VARMR acknowledges financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) in the form of an exploratory project of reference IF/00498/2015/CP1302/CT0001, and from the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (MCTES) through national funds and when applicable co-funded EU funds under the project UIDB/EEA/50008/2020, and supported by Enabling Green E-science for the Square Kilometre Array Research Infrastructure (ENGAGE-SKA), POCI-01-0145- FEDER-022217, and PHOBOS, POCI-01-0145-FEDER029932, funded by Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (COMPETE 2020) and FCT, Portugal. The analysis made significant use of python 3.7.4, and the associated packages NumPy, matplotlib, seaborn, scipy. Data reduction made significant use of

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Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: American Astronomical Society
Published in: Astrophysical Journal, 939(1), Art. No. 6, ISSN: 0004-637X.