From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
nova
n : a star that ejects some of its material in the form of a
cloud and become more luminous in the process
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Nova \No"va\ (n[=o]"v[.a]), n.; pl. L. Novae (n[=o]"v[=e]), E.
Novas (n[=o]"v[.a]z). [L., fem. sing. of novus new.]
(Astron.)
A star which suddenly increases in brightness thousands of
times, then fades back to near its original intensity. It may
appear as a "new" star if its original brightness was too low
for routine observation. A star which suddenly increases in
brightness to many millions of times its original intensity
is a supernova, and the postulated mechanisms for the
increases of brightness of novae and supernovae are
different.
Note: The most important modern novae are:
No"va Co*ro"nae Bo`re*a"lis[1866];
No"va Cyg"ni[1876];
No"va An*dro"me*dae[1885];
No"va Au*ri"gae[1891-92];
No"va Per"se*i[1901]. There are two novae called {Nova
Persei}. They are:
(a) A small nova which appeared in 1881.
(b) An extraordinary nova which appeared in Perseus in 1901.
It was first sighted on February 22, and for one night
(February 23) was the brightest star in the sky. By July
it had almost disappeared, after which faint surrounding
nebulous masses were discovered, apparently moving
radially outward from the star at incredible velocity.
[Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
Nova
<processor> A minicomputer(?), introduced some time before
1978, with four 16-bit accumulators, AC0 to AC3 and a 15 bit
program counter. A later model also had a 15-bit {stack
pointer} and frame pointer. AC2 and AC3 could be used for
indexed addresses and AC3 was used to store the return address
on a subroutine call. Apart from the small register set,
the NOVA was an ordinary CPU design.
Memory could be access indirectly through addresses stored in
other memory locations. If locations 0 to 3 were used for
this purpose, they were auto-incremented after being used. If
locations 4 to 7 were used, they were auto-decremented.
Memory could be addressed in 16-bit words up to a maximum of
32K words (64K bytes). The instruction cycle time was 500
nanoseconds(?) cycle time for each. The Nova originally
used core memory though later on they gained dynamic RAM.
Like the PDP-8, the Data General Nova was also copied, not
just in one, but two implementations - the {Data General
MN601} and Fairchild 9440. Luckily, the NOVA was a more
mature design than the PDP-8.
Another CPU, the PACE, was based on the NOVA design, but
featured 16-bit addresses (instead of the Nova's 15), more
addressing modes and a 10-level stack (like the {Intel
8008}).
[Date, speed, mini?]
(1996-03-01)