Banerjee, D.P.K.Hsiao, E.Y.Diamond, T.Galbany, L.Morrell, N.Minniti, D.Kuncarayakti, H.Mattila, S.Harmanen, J.2019-12-172019-12-172018-11Astrophysical Journal, 867(2), art. no. 99.0004-637XDOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aae5d3http://repositorio.unab.cl/xmlui/handle/ria/11520Indexación: Scopus.E.Y.H. acknowledges the support provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1613472 and by the Florida Space Grant Consortium. L.G. acknowledges support from the FINCA visitor programme. The research work at the Physical Research Laboratory is funded by the Department of Space, Government of India. Facility: Magellan: Baade(FIRE).The enigmatic near-infrared transient VVV-WIT-06 underwent a large-amplitude eruption of unclear origin in 2013 July. Based on its light curve properties and late-time post-outburst spectra, various possibilities have been proposed in the literature for the origin of the object, namely a Type I supernova, a classical nova (CN), or a violent stellar merger event. We show that, of these possibilities, an origin in a CN outburst convincingly explains the observed properties of VVV-WIT-06. We estimate that the absolute K-band magnitude of the nova at maximum was M k = -8.2 ±0.5, its distance d = 13.35 ±2.18 kpc, and the extinction A v = 15.0 ±0.55 mag. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.enInfrared: starsLine: identificationNovae, cataclysmic variablesStars: individual (VVV-WIT-06)Techniques: spectroscopicArtículo