2008IAUC.8911....2N

J.-U. Ness and S. Starrfield, Arizona State University; G. J. Schwarz, West Chester University; and J. P. Osborne and K. Page, University of Leicester, report on behalf of the Swift "nova-CV group" on an x-ray detection of V597 Pup on Jan. 8.02 and 17.18 UT. The count rates, after PSF correction and correction for bad columns, were 0.010 ± 0.003 and 0.012 ± 0.002 counts/s, respectively, in the XRT energy band 0.3-10 keV. The source is soft, with the majority of counts below 0.7 keV. V597 Pup was not detected in two earlier Swift observations obtained on 2007 Nov. 20 and Dec. 11. Nearly simultaneously with the first Swift detection, R. J. Rudy, R. W. Russell, and D. K. Lynch, The Aerospace Corporation; C. E. Woodward, University of Minnesota; and A. Rivkin, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, obtained spectroscopic observations spanning 0.8-2.42 microns using the Infrared Telescope Facility (+ SPeX) on Jan. 7.48. V597 Pup (cf. IAUC 8896) has now reached moderately high excitation, suggesting that the x-ray detection represents the ionizing source. Strong lines of He II, the unidentified nova lines at 1.11, 1.19, 1.55, and 2.09 microns, and weak coronal lines of [S VIII], [Si VI], and [Ca VIII] were detected. The H I and He I lines remain broad and flat-topped with FWHM approximately 3500 km/s. The O I lines that are fluorescently excited by Lyman_beta are still present and indicate a small reddening of E(B-V) about 0.3. There are no indications of dust formation in the nova.