When I was at JPL (c. 1980), I heard about a nearby (<100 light-years)
Nova in the Constellation Aquila in the 1930s or 1940s, although I
could be wrong about the year.  I'm sure it's between 1910 and 1960.

I would like to know the day of first observation and the distance, if
possible, accurate to the light-day.

I've done a few google searches for Nova Aquilae and think it's likely
Nova Aquilae 1945, but it could be 1943 or one of the 1936s.  I
thought it could have been the brightest one, but a google source puts
the distance of Nova Aquilae 1918 at 1200 light-years.

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 27 Jun 2003 04:58 PDT

I wonder if what you're referring to is different from this Nova Aquila in 1995:

http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/mukai/iphome/systems/v1425aql.html

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Clarification of Question by arubin-ga on 27 Jun 2003 13:58 PDT

From my original question:
The distance is to be <100 light-years.

techor's suggestion is at a distance of 3.6-4.8 kpc.

abha18's suggestion is c. 1200 ly.

iang's suggestion is a good one, but I can't find Robert Trumpler's papers online.

I don't know the answer, but Robert Trumpler measured the proper
motion of a nova in Aquila.  To have shown any proper motion at all it
must have been close, so that might be the one.  Sadly, I don't know
which "Nova Aquila" Trumpler observed or even when he published. 
Still, it might be a clue!

Ian G.

About the earliest nova detected in aquila:
http://www.astronomy.org.nz/journal/2000/2000_august/aquila_the_eagle.htm

(Extract)A number of novae have been detected in Aquila, notably in
1899, 1905, 1925, 1927, 1936 (twice), 1943 and 1945 though all were on
the limit of naked eye vision (6th magnitude) or less.  A brilliant
nova was recorded in AD 389 which equalled Venus in brilliance,
vanishing within three weeks while another was seen 60 years
previously.  The brightest in the modern era burst forth on 8 June
1918, the most brilliant in 300 years.  At discovery, it outshone
nearby Altair.  Photographs showed this star to be of 11th magnitude
on 3rd June but by the 9th June, it had risen 100,000 times in
brightness to magnitude -1.4.  It had a luminosity of 440,000 times
the Sun before fading to 6th magnitude by the next spring.  Seven
years later, it had faded back to its original brightness of 11
magnitude.  Nova Aquilae is currently a blue O-type star and is also
now known to be a close binary with a period of only 3 hours 20
minutes.

Some more info abou the brightest nova and distance in constellation
aquila can be found here:
http://halifax.rasc.ca/nn/nn2604a.html

(Extract) The most brilliant recorded nova to appear in 300 years,
burst forth in Aquila in 1918, it being first noticed on the night of
June 8th as a 1st magnitude star 6 degrees north of the Scutum star
cloud. At its maximum, it was only out shone by the brilliant Sirius.
The precursor object was 11th magnitude.

At a calculated distance of 1,200 ly's, the event actually occurred in
700 A.D. The maximum luminosity was 440,000 suns, ranking it among the
brightest normal novae on record, which total about 100. Spectroscopic
studies revealed successive shells of gas being blown into space at
speeds of between 1,600 and 2,200 km/s. A few months after maximum, a
gaseous nebulosity was detected, which had a diameter increasing at a
rate of 2"/yr. This gaseous shell eventually faded into space and Nova
Aquila is now a bluish star of magnitude 11.95 and apparently much
smaller and denser than our sun. It took 7 years to fade to back to
its normal magnitude state.


I found some info on the brightest nova here:
http://www.todayinsci.com/cgi-bin/indexpage.pl?http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:RSj3Cc0HxAcJ:www.todayinsci.com/6/6_08.htm+Nova+Aquila+light+years&hl=en&ie=UTF-8