The Distances of the Galactic Novae

TL;DR

This paper develops a method using red clump giants on near-IR colour-magnitude diagrams to determine distances to 119 Galactic novae, providing new distance estimates and reddening-distance relations for Galactic structure studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel technique for measuring nova distances using red clump giants and applies it to derive distances for 73 novae, including lower limits for 46 others.

Findings

Distances for 73 Galactic novae were determined.

Reddening-distance relations were established for each nova.

Lower limits on distances for 46 systems were set.

Abstract

Utilising the unique location of red clump giants on colour-magnitude diagrams obtained from various near-IR surveys, we derived specific reddening-distance relations towards 119 Galactic novae for which independent reddening measurements are available. Using the derived distance-extinction relation and the independent measurements of reddening we calculated the most likely distances for each system. We present the details of our distance measurement technique and the results of this analysis, which yielded the distances of 73 Galactic novae and allowed us to set lower limits on the distances of 46 systems. We also present the reddening-distance relations derived for each nova, which may be useful to analyze the different Galactic components present in the line of sight.