Abstract
Observations of the classical nova QU Vul (1984) were carried out in the infrared, optical, and radio regimes between days 3791 and 4262 after discovery. For the first time a spatial extension of the shell around QU Vul could be unambiguously established from our IR and optical observations. At 2.2 μm, a shell size of about 08 was found, which corresponds to a linear diameter of (4.5 ± 0.4) × 1016 cm on day 4124 assuming QU Vul is 3.6 kpc distant. The mass of the shell is (4 ± 1.5) × 10-4 M⊙ with the assumption that a free-free emission process is the dominant emission mechanism in the shell. This shell mass is larger than found for any nova.
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