In the winter months of 2007, astrophysicists from all over the world had made a beeline to observatories on mountaintops to observe a bright explosion born out of the cosmic dance of a white dwarf and its companion star resulting in thick dust around an imploding novae.
- Dr R K Das, scientist from SN Bose Centre for Basic Science (SNBCBS) who had stationed himself at Mount Abu Observatory, and his team, observed the imploding novae called Nova V1280 Scorpii and found that a thick dust formed around it after a month and lasted for about 250 days.
- The team from SNBCBS used the observed data on infrared spectra of the imploding novae and constructed simple models which helped them estimate its parameters like hydrogen density, temperature, luminosity and elemental abundances during pre- and post-dust phase.
- They have found high abundance of certain elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the ejecta along with a mixture of small amorphous carbon dust grains and large astrophysical silicate dust grains.
- The dust formation was observed in parallel by international collaborators of the team from the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. This helped them take precision measurements of the rate of expansion of the dust shell around a nova for the first time.
