Old Novae: When New Becomes Old*

Despite their brightness at maximum, classical novae are very faint at
minimum light implying little or no follow up at all during quiescence.
In fact, about 3/4 of the 204 novae that erupted before 1980 still lack
spectroscopic observations or even an unambiguous identification of the
post-nova. We embarked on a project aimed at deriving the physical
properties of old novae decades after the explosion thus placing
post-novae in the framework of CV-evolution and being able to compare
the characteristics of the eruption with the characteristics of the
remnant. We present an overview of this project as well as preliminary
results.