Recurrent novae

Abstract

Recurrent novae seem to be a rather inhomogeneous group: T CrB is a binary with a M III companion; U Sco probably has a late dwarf as companion. Three are fast novae; two are slow novae. Some of them appear to have normal chemical composition; others may present He and CNO excess. Some present a mass-loss that is lower by two orders of magnitude than classical novae. However, our sample is too small for saying whether there are several classes of recurrent novae, which may be related to the various classes of classical novae, or whether the low mass-loss is a general property of the class or just a peculiarity of one member of the larger class of classical novae and recurrent novae.