VVV-NOV-005: the first VVV Galactic nova candidate in the disk area
R. K. Saito (Universidade Federal de Sergipe), D. Minniti (Universidad Andres Bello, Vatican Observatory, Millennium Institute of Astrophysics), R. Angeloni (Gemini Observatory), I. Dekany (Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile), M. Catelan (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Millennium Institute of Astrophysics)
We report the discovery of the first likely nova by the VVV Survey in its disk area (vvvsurvey.org; Minniti et al. 2010, New Astronomy, 15, 433). Observations taken during 2010-2012 show the presence of a stellar source fading in brightness from March 06 2010 to May 11 2012 (see table below). VVV-NOV-005 follows the expected behavior of a nova during outburst, fading by Delta_Ks=7.4 mag over 797 days. Its light curve exhibits similar behavior as the other novae previously discovered by the VVV Survey towards the Galactic bulge (ATel#4426, ATel#4830, ATel#6022).

The coordinates of VVV-NOV-005 are (RA,DEC)=16:21:59.09,-51:08:41.00, corresponding to (l,b)=-27.1547,-0.9312. The nova outburst occurred before the first VVV observation of the field on March 06 2010, when the object is seen as a saturated source with Ks=9.42 mag. On March 25 2010 the object shows Ks=11.37 mag and (J-Ks)=1.48 mag. VVV-NOV-005 is beyond detection in several Ks-band observations taken in year 2013, which allow us to infer that the nova remnant is fainter than the limiting magnitude of Ks=18.2 mag in the field. There are no previous entries in the literature for the target position.

Acknowledgments: We gratefully acknowledge use of data from the ESO Public Survey programme ID 179.B-2002 taken with the VISTA telescope, and data products from the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit. R.K.S. acknowledges support from CNPq/Brazil.
infra-red,nova,transient