Alrighty, according to an aavso special notice, itself quoting an
IAUC, there's another new nova in Scorpius (and one of these days
someone will finally explain to me why folk in the USA always uniquely
stick # symbols in front of numbers).

Anyway, there's no details in the aavso alert as to where the
astrometry comes from, ie is it from the original wide field images,
thus likely to be replaced at a later date by a better position, or
has someone done a more rigorous measure as follow up.

So, this is what I usually do in such cases, coz remember this ain't
been confirmed a true nova yet...

...coz it's the second one in Scorpius this year, the first one has
it's name change from N Sco 2007 to N Sco 2007/1 (this notation has no
special privilege, it's simply copied from the original Duerbeck
source tables used for the <=1987 data).

Thus the line for that in galnovae.dat becomes

N Sco 2007/1 2007 V1280 Sco 16 57 40.91 -32 20 36.4 9.4
C 3.7 v <20 r N Nakamura.Y,
Sakurai.Y

it'll've got wordwrapped.

Now, the new one needs data entering, in RA position, which by sheer
freaky coincidence is exactly before the N Sco 2007/1 position in this
instance.

NOTE, this is preliminary, this will only work if it turns out to be a
real nova, though at present there's no reason for it not to, but
sometimes stuff turns out to be a CV, therefore the truly cautious
will back up their copy of galnovae.dat first.

Also, until it is official the designation of V1281 Sco is complete
assumption!

Anyway, insert this into galnovae.dat immediately before the entry for
N Sco 2007/1

N Sco 2007/2 2007 V1281 Sco 16 56 59.35 -35 21 50.2 9.2
p N? Nakamura.Y.,
Nishimura.H.

which again will need unwordwrapping to be only one line.

If/when confirmed all that needs to be changed is the N? to N.

If astrometry preliminary and better astrometry released at later
date, the position needs updating.

If the discovery mag turns out to be the max mag, that entry can be
made (galnovae.dat has column headers on first line), if the max mag
exceeds discovery mag, that can be entered later too, all a matter of
personal choice and preference.

IF the thing gets rejected as a nova, the complete line is simple
deleted and galnovae.dat resaved and consequently it's no different
than what it was.

Well, except N Sco 2007/1 will have to be renamed back to N Sco 2007 ,
which is always a bit of a nuisance when two go off in the same
constellation, and you have to remember these knock on changes.

It's as easy as that to add new novae, even when they are tentative,
and although it would be wiser to wait for better data before
updating, some folk will want to look at it _now_, so there's often a
transitory phase. Announcement in an IAUC, even without spectroscopic
confirmation, should be safe-ish, especially as no precursor can be
found in the field down to POSS plate limits, allegedly.

Again, anyone can update these files as long as they can find data
posted to some mailing list or other, in this instance it's available
online via aavso's home page, quoting directly from the official cbat
iauc. And if it turns out to be a bust, it can be removed just as easily.

Cheers

John

PS whether the nearby red star is truly variable is on the edge of
being debatable. The asas3 data at this mag can look like that just
due to scatter, and it is sparse, but what can ya do, ya get fedup of
explaining stuff after awhile.