Q Cygni

One of the earliest novae recorded,[6] Q Cygni was discovered by astronomer Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt on November 24, 1876.

The white dwarf is surrounded by an accretion disc, which blazes much brighter than the star it circles.

[5] The secondary star has been estimated to be around 0.6 times as massive as the Sun, making it an orange dwarf of spectral type K5.

[3] A small nebulous disc was reported around the nova and this led to it being listed in the New General Catalogue as a possible planetary nebula.

No nebulosity is visible in modern observations and the Revised New General Catalogue lists this as a "non-existent" object.

The light curve of Q Cygni. The red points are from a table published by Schmidt, and the blue points were measured from a plot published by Lockyer. [ 9 ] [ 10 ]