V1280 Sco is one of the slowest dust-forming nova ever historically observed. We performed multi-epoch high-spatial resolution observations of the circumstellar dusty environment of V1280 Sco to investigate the level of asymmetry of the ejecta We obs
erved V1280 Sco in 2009, 2010 and 2011 using unprecedented high angular resolution techniques. We used the NACO/VLT adaptive optics system in the J, H and K bands, together with contemporaneous VISIR/VLT mid-IR imaging that resolved the dust envelope of V1280 Sco, and SINFONI/VLT observations secured in 2011. We report the discovery of a dusty hourglass-shaped bipolar nebula. The apparent size of the nebula increased from 0.30 x 0.17 in July 2009 to 0.64 x 0.42 in July 2011. The aspect ratio suggests that the source is seen at high inclination. The central source shines efficiently in the K band and represents more than 56+/-5% of the total flux in 2009, and 87+/-6% in 2011. A mean expansion rate of 0.39+/-0.03 mas per day is inferred from the VISIR observations in the direction of the major axis, which represents a projected upper limit. Assuming that the dust shell expands in that direction as fast as the low-excitation slow ejecta detected in spectroscopy, this yields a lower limit distance to V1280 Sco of 1kpc; however, the systematic errors remain large due to the complex shape and velocity field of the dusty ejecta. The dust seems to reside essentially in the polar caps and no infrared flux is detected in the equatorial regions in the latest dataset. This may imply that the mass-loss was dominantly polar.
We report results of an extensive world-wide observing campaign devoted to the recently discovered dwarf nova SDSS J162520.29+120308.7 (SDSS J1625). The data were obtained during the July 2010 eruption of the star and in August and September 2010 whe
n the object was in quiescence. During the July 2010 superoutburst SDSS J1625 clearly displayed superhumps with a mean period of $P_{rm sh}=0.095942(17)$ days ($138.16 pm 0.02$ min) and a maximum amplitude reaching almost 0.4 mag. The superhump period was not stable, decreasing very rapidly at a rate of $dot P = -1.63(14)cdot 10^{-3}$ at the beginning of the superoutburst and increasing at a rate of $dot P = 2.81(20)cdot 10^{-4}$ in the middle phase. At the end of the superoutburst it stabilized around the value of $P_{rm sh}=0.09531(5)$ day. During the first twelve hours of the superoutburst a low-amplitude double wave modulation was observed whose properties are almost identical to early superhumps observed in WZ Sge stars. The period of early superhumps, the period of modulations observed temporarily in quiescence and the period derived from radial velocity variations are the same within measurement errors, allowing us to estimate the most probable orbital period of the binary to be $P_{rm orb}=0.09111(15)$ days ($131.20 pm 0.22$ min). This value clearly indicates that SDSS J1625 is another dwarf nova in the period gap. Knowledge of the orbital and superhump periods allows us to estimate the mass ratio of the system to be $qapprox 0.25$. This high value poses serious problems both for the thermal and tidal instability (TTI) model describing the behaviour of dwarf novae and for some models explaining the origin of early superhumps.
