T Aurigae

Thomas David Anderson, an amateur astronomer in Edinburgh, reported that he was "almost certain" he saw the nova at 02:00 UT on 24 January 1892, when it was slightly brighter than χ Aurigae (apparent magnitude 4.74).

On 31 January 1892 he realized his mistake, and wrote a note to Ralph Copeland (the Astronomer Royal of Scotland) reporting his discovery.

[4] Professor Copeland immediately reported the discovery via telegram to William Huggins, who made the first spectroscopic observations of T Aurigae on 2 February 1892, when the star was a magnitude 4.5 object.

[8] Pre-discovery images on photographic plates allowed the a light curve beginning in late 1891 to be constructed.

[9] T Aurigae was the third nova that was discovered to be a short-period eclipsing binary, and that discovery led to increased speculation that the nova phenomenon was connected to close binary star pairs.

Location of T Aurigae (circled in red)
The light curve of T Aurigae, plotted from photographic magnitude data tabulated by Shapley. [ 7 ] Data values listed with identical times were averaged before being plotted.
Two images of the shell surrounding T Aurigae taken 38 years apart, showing the nebula's expansion. Both were taken with Hα filters , left at the Kitt Peak National Observatory , and right with the Nordic Optical Telescope . [ 1 ]