DQ Her is the name of a dim 15th magnitude variable star which flared up into a 1.4 magnitude nova in 1934. The nova slowly dimmed over the next 90 days, eventually dropping below naked eye brightness. But soon after, the nova reversed itself, increasing in brightness to almost naked eye brightness again. Since then, its brightness has slowly returned to its original 15th magnitude.

Interestingly, some believe that the 1934 nova event, which garnered world attention, helped to shape the backstory of Superman at that same time. Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel was quite interested in amateur astronomy and organized a neighborhood astronomy club when he was a teenager.

Since the 1934 nova event, this star has been studied extensively. In fact, it became the prototype for a class of stars called DQ Her stars. These stars, also known as a type of cataclysmic variable stars called intermediate polars, consist of a close binary star system - a white dwarf and a red giant. In this case, the orbital period is only 4-1/2 hours. Because the stars orbit each other very closely, the strong gravitational field of the white dwarf siphons off material from the red dwarf star in a stream of hot hydrogen gas that circles the white dwarf in an accretion disk and spirals down towards the white dwarf.

The sudden increase in brightness of DQ Her in 1934 is believed to have been caused by flare-ups in the accretion disk or in matter accreted onto the surface of the white dwarf. The strong magnetic field of the white dwarf disrupts the accretion and causes more complex brightening and fading in short periods of time.

The small nova remnent surrounding DQ Her was likely ejected from the nova during the 1934 event. Nova remnants are much smaller in energy and mass than both supernova remnants and planetary nebulae, and can be observed for up to a few centuries. This remnant is at a distance of 1700 light years and is 25 arc-seconds long in our apparent view. Its true diameter is about 0.1 light year. The remnant did not show up in my red, green, blue, or OIII integrated images, and only faintly in the Ha image. My image shows a slight pinch of the remnant at the equator.

Most interesting to me is that all of my integrated channels showed two distinct points of light at the center of the nova remnant. A paper from 1979 (Remarks on the Visual Binary DQ Herculis) suggests that the 2nd point of light (at 4 arc-seconds of separation from DQ Her) is likely a physical member of the DQ Her system, although of course not one of the close binary stars.