KT Eridani
star in the constellation Eridanus
KT Eridani (Nova Eridani 2009) was a bright nova in the constellation Eridanus that produced an outburst in 2009. It was the first classical nova ever detected in that constellation. The nova was discovered at 12:52 UT on 25 November 2009 by K. Itagaki at Yamagata, Japan with a 21 cm patrol telescope. At the time of its discovery, it was a magnitude 8.1 object.
The discovery occurred after the nova's peak brightness, but the All Sky Automated Survey system had detected the nova on three earlier occasions, allowing a more complete light curve to be produced. The peak magnitude, 5.4, was seen at 15:10 UT on 14 November 2009, at which time it would have been visible to the naked eye.
A very high temporal resolution light curve, beginning on 13 November 2009, was obtained from images taken by the Solar Mass Ejection Imager on the Coriolis satellite. These observations show that the peak brightness, magnitude 5.42±0.02, occurred at November 14.67±0.04 UT. The satellite was able to detect the nova until November 27.23±0.04, by which time it had dropped to magnitude 8.3±0.1. It is classified as a very fast nova, meaning it dimmed rapidly after peak brightness.
On 28 December 2009 (44 days after peak brightness) it was detected as a 0.21 milliJansky source at 5 GHz by the Very Large Array.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “KT Eridani” is star in the constellation Eridanus. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Eridani, star and constellation, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q76598331. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “KT Eridani” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.