Dear everyone,
I have triggered a NuSTAR observation of the southern nova candidate PNV J17224490-4137160 aiming to characterize shock-powered hard X-ray emission often found in novae. NuSTAR will be pointed at PNV J17224490-4137160 continuously between 2023-04-21 21 UT (less than 5 hours from now!) and 2023-04-23 10 UT (Sunday morning).
If you manage to collect time series photometry of PNV J17224490-4137160 during or close in time to the NuSTAR observing window - please kindly share your measurements with me. Observations in the V band are preferred, but other filters as well as unfiltered observations will be useful too.
For context: the only previous simultaneous NuSTAR/optical time series observation of a nova (that I'm aware of) was that of V1674 Her in 2021, see Figure 2 in this paper https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023MNRAS.521.5453S/abstract The observation revealed irregular variations in both optical and X-ray bands. The origin of these variations is unclear. The planned NuSTAR observation of PNV J17224490-4137160 provides an opportunity to collect more data and maybe find some clues.
PNV J17224490-4137160 still awaits spectroscopic confirmation, but seems very likely to be a classical nova given its brightness and position close to the Galactic plane.
At the declination of -41 it is best positioned for the observers in Southern hemisphere.
CBAT "Transient Object Followup Reports" for PNV J17224490-4137160 http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/unconf/followups/J17224490-4137160.html
The VSX page of PNV J17224490-4137160 https://www.aavso.org/vsx/index.php?view=detail.top&oid=2387214
Best wishes, Kirill Sokolovsky