**This is the biggest nova super-remnant ever discovered**
*By Dwaipayan Roy | Sep 27, 2025, 04:02 PM*
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### What’s the story?
A team of astronomers has discovered a rare nova super-remnant (NSR) surrounding the recurrent nova LMCN 1971-08a in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This marks the first time an NSR has been detected in the LMC. The discovery was made by analyzing data from multiple astronomical surveys combined with observations from the MeerKAT radio telescope. The findings have been published on the arXiv preprint server.
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### What are Nova Super-Remnants?
Nova super-remnants are enormous shell-like structures far larger than individual eruption nova shells. They form when repeated nova eruptions push the surrounding material outward, creating a dense outer shell around the nova.
Although NSRs are predicted to form around all novae, only four such structures have been identified to date — three of which are located within our own galaxy.
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### Profile of LMCN 1971-08a
LMCN 1971-08a is one of the four known recurrent novae in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It has a recurrence period of approximately 38 years, with its latest eruption observed in 2009.
This fast-declining nova system consists of a white dwarf with a mass estimated between 1.1 and 1.3 times that of our Sun. The white dwarf accretes material from its companion, a sub-giant star. The system’s probable orbital period is about 1.2 days.
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### The Discovery
The discovery team, led by Michael W. Healy-Kalesh of Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany, detected a coherent, shell-like structure spatially coincident with LMCN 1971-08a.
The structure displays a circular shape, appearing brighter toward the northeast and southwest, with a fainter boundary connecting these two regions to the northwest.
Data analysis suggests that this newly found structure is an NSR measuring roughly 650 light years in diameter.
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### Structure Details: The Largest Nova Super-Remnant Yet
The outer shell of this NSR is estimated to contain about 4,130 solar masses of material and expand at a velocity of around 20 km/s. The age of the nova super-remnant is estimated at approximately 2.4 million years.
This colossal size makes it the largest nova super-remnant ever discovered, providing new insights into the long-term evolution of recurrent novae and their impact on the surrounding interstellar medium.
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**Stay tuned for more updates on this groundbreaking discovery and its implications for our understanding of stellar phenomena.**
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/lmcn-1971-08a-found-in-the-large-magellanic-cloud/story