Galactic Extinction: How Many Novae Does It Hide and How Does It Affect the Galactic Nova Rate?
Creators
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1.
Michigan State University
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Lomonosov Moscow State University
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The Ohio State University
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Goddard Space Flight Center
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University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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California Institute of Technology
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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Carnegie Observatories
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Diego Portales University
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Millennium Institute of Astrophysics
Abstract
There is a long-standing discrepancy between the observed Galactic classical nova rate of ∼10 yr⁻¹ and the predicted rate from Galactic models of ∼30–50 yr⁻¹. One explanation for this discrepancy is that many novae are hidden by interstellar extinction, but the degree to which dust can obscure novae is poorly constrained. We use newly available all-sky three-dimensional dust maps to compare the brightness and spatial distribution of known novae to that predicted from relatively simple models in which novae trace Galactic stellar mass. We find that only half (53%) of the novae are expected to be easily detectable (g ≲ 15) with current all-sky optical surveys such as the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN). This fraction is much lower than previously estimated, showing that dust does substantially affect nova detection in the optical. By comparing complementary survey results from the ASAS-SN, OGLE-IV, and Palomar Gattini IR surveys using our modeling, we find a tentative Galactic nova rate of ∼30 yr⁻¹, though this could be as high as ∼40 yr⁻¹, depending on the assumed distribution of novae within the Galaxy. These preliminary estimates will be improved in future work through more sophisticated modeling of nova detection in ASAS-SN and other surveys.
Additional Information
© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2021 May 27; revised 2021 August 17; accepted 2021 August 17; published 2021 November 16. We thank P. Mroz for providing data contributing to this work. We also thank Jo Bovy, D. J. Marshall, A. C. Robin, and I. T. Simion for helpful discussions and the referee for suggestions that substantially improved the paper. A.K., L.C., E.A., and K.V.S. acknowledge the financial support of NSF award AST-1751874 and a Cottrell fellowship of the Research Corporation. J.S. acknowledges support from the Packard Foundation. B.J.S., C.S.K., and K.Z.S. are supported by NSF grant AST-1907570. C.S.K. and K.Z.S. are supported by NSF grant AST-181440. We thank the Las Cumbres Observatory and its staff for their continuing support of the ASAS-SN project. The ASAS-SN is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through grant GBMF5490 to the Ohio State University and NSF grants AST-1515927 and AST-1908570. Development of ASAS-SN has been supported by NSF grant AST-0908816, the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation, the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences South America Center for Astronomy (CAS-SACA), and the Villum Foundation. The analysis for this work was performed primarily in ipython (Perez & Granger 2007) using numpy (Oliphant 2006; Van Der Walt et al. 2011), Astropy (Price-Whelan et al. 2018), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), and scipy (Virtanen et al. 2020).Attached Files
Published - Kawash_2021_ApJ_922_25.pdf
Submitted - 2105.13893.pdf
Files
2105.13893.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 109371
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210603-122537917
Related works
- Describes
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.13893 (URL)
Funding
- NSF
- AST-1751874
- Cottrell Scholar of Research Corporation
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- NSF
- AST-1907570
- NSF
- AST-181440
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- GBMF5490
- NSF
- AST-1515927
- NSF
- AST-1908570
- NSF
- AST-0908816
- Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation
- Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences South America Center for Astronomy (CASSACA)
- Villum Foundation
Dates
- Created
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2021-06-03Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-23Created from EPrint's last_modified field