AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 98 Seeing the Universe in a New (Sodium) Light: Early Science Results from Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics
Special Session, Tuesday, 2:00-3:30pm, January 10, 2006, Delaware A

Previous   |   Session 98   |   Next  |   Author Index   |   Block Schedule


[98.04] Keck II, LGSAO, OSIRIS observations of V723 Cas, Nova Cas 1995

J.E. Lyke, R.D. Campbell, J.A. Mader, F.H. Chaffee (Keck Obs.), J.E. Larkin, M. Barczys, J.L. Weiss, S.A. Wright, M.W. McElwain (UCLA)

We present the spatially resolved velocity structure of the V723 Cas nova shell. Strong coronal emission lines of [Si VI] and [Al IX] are present in the expanding shell. Br\gamma is detected but not spatially resolved which implies that hydrogen recombination emission is absent in the nova shell. The PSF/continuum subtracted data cubes reveal the morphology of the nova shell in 3 dimensions. The shell is slightly elliptical with a semi-major axis of 0.35 arcsec or 1200 AU using a distance of 3.5 kpc. We selected V723 Cas in this pilot study of nova shells since it showed double-peaked coronal line emission in NIRSPEC spectra from 2004 (presented here). Additionally, the shell has continued to expand since it was unresolved in a 1998 HST+NICMOS study. The intervening 7 years and coronal emission made V723 Cas an ideal candidate for the unprecedented spatial resolution in the infrared provided by OSIRIS with LGSAO on Keck II.


Previous   |   Session 98   |   Next

Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.