My first Nova

I saw my first Nova tonight!  Nova Del 2013 was mentioned in S&T's newsletter that I read this afternoon.  It was said to be easily visible in binoculars and unaided in fairly dark skies.  Well, with a moon well past first quarter I knew I wasn't going to have anything close to dark skies but I hauled out my trusty 7x50's anyway to see if I could even find Delphinus, the constellation that hosts the new nova.  I was able to see the summer triangle just fine so my hopes were raised.  I started with Altair in Aquila and hopped west to Sagitta the arrow which points to the nova.  After a bit of fiddling with a star chart to see just where the nova was located, I decided it was about a binocular width away from the tip of the arrow.  Sure enough, there were two fairly bright stars where there should only be one. The star was HR 7811, a mag 5.7 star in Vulpecula, and not quite as bright as the 'new star'.  I estimated the nova was about mag 5.0, not quite as bright as the 4.4 mentioned in the S&T article, but still plenty bright.  If it wasn't for the moon I would have been able to see it unaided. For comparison I used 28 and 29 Vul.  The nova was not quite as bright as 29 Vul but brighter than 28 Vul, hence 5.0.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  If that is the case, the nova may have already 'peaked' and be gradually dimming after growing in brightness the last few days.  It'll be interesting to see what others report.  At any rate, it was neat to finally see an 'exploding star' for myself.  This particular 'classical nova' was only discovered on Aug 14.  It was essentially a hydrogen bomb in the form of a thin shell about the size of Earth which surrounded a white dwarf.  The dwarf survives the blast and begins accumulating more hydrogen from its larger companion and the process repeats ever so often.
I'll need to come back and visit this location in a few days to see if the new 'star' has disappeared from view.