Saw one nova for sure, but the second . . .

Checked on Nova Scorpii 2007 about 5:15 am this morning from the road in front of my house - I would put it at about 5.1 - just a shade dimmer than the 5.0 comparison star. I was using the 15X45 IS Canon's again and had printed out the star chart from Astronomy magazine that shows this nova and the new one, but I had trouble spotting the second nova. If I wasn't so darned cold - I had been out doing other things for the past hour and it was around 21-degrees (inside the observatory) with a heck of a wind - I should have brought out one of the Short Tube 80s.

Anyway, I can only guess the second nova is still around 8 or 9. (Click image below for a somewhat larger chart in separate window. Numbers are magnitudes with decimal point left out.))

Epsion Scorpii is the starting point and easy to spot - and, of course, Jupiter is over in this neighborhood as well.

As near as I can tell, the the first nova, with it's two companions, the one to the east being 5.0 and the one to the west, dimmer, form a very nice little triangle. You can turn that triangle into a traditional kite with another 5th mag star well south of it . Go to the west and further south and there's a star that looks to be about sixth magnitude. The new nova should be just above it and to the right (west), but in the 15X45s I could only glimpse a star in that position and could not be certain. In any event, this whole field with both nova easily fits in the 15X45 fov which is about 4.5 degrees. (I wrote this before making the chart above and checking the magnitudes, but my estimates agree with Starry Nights and frankly, I don't know how reliable their magnitudes are. I usually depend on the AAVSO, but I can't get their chart link to deliver the chart they say it will . . .ah well. A little puzzled by how Sky and Telescope first reported this as possible and made it their top news item, then once it became confirmed sort of buried the news in another more general story about what's up.)

Still blows my mind that we're looking at two such events at virtually the same time and in such a tiny corner of the sky.