1998AJ....116.1966S

Observations of the classical nova QU Vul (1984) were carried out in the infrared, optical, and radio regimes between days 3791 and 4262 after discovery. For the first time a spatial extension of the shell around QU Vul could be unambiguously established from our IR and optical observations. At 2.2 µm, a shell size of about 0".8 was found, which corresponds to a linear diameter of (4.5±0.4)x10¹⁶ cm on day 4124 assuming QU Vul is 3.6 kpc distant. The mass of the shell is (4±1.5)x10^–4 M_☉ with the assumption that a free-free emission process is the dominant emission mechanism in the shell. This shell mass is larger than found for any nova.