A Far‐Ultraviolet Study of the Nova‐like V794 Aquilae

V794 Aql was observed in a high state with the Hubble Space Telescope Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph ( HST STIS) on 2003 August 28, and with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer ( FUSE ) on 2004 May 13. We present here a spectral analysis of the FUSE and HST STIS spectra. For a 0.9 M ☉ , the best fit is an accretion disk with a mass accretion rate Ṁ = 10 -8.5 to 10 -8.0 M ☉ yr -1 with an inclination of 60° when assuming E ( B - V ) = 0.2. The corresponding distance to the system is d = 690 pc. A single white dwarf model leads to a rather hot temperature (between 30,000 and 55,000 K depending on the assumptions) but does not provide a fit as good as the accretion disk model. The same disk model is the best fit to the FUSE spectrum, the HST STIS spectrum, and the combined FUSE + HST STIS spectrum, implying therefore that the disk model is the best fit not only in the least χ 2 sense, but also as a consistent solution across a large-wavelength span of observation. We find that the model fits are in much better agreement with the dereddened spectra when E ( B - V ) is large, as excess emission in the longer wavelengths renders the slope of the observed spectra almost impossible to fit, unless E ( B - V ) = 0.2 . A large reddening value is in agreement with the hydrogen column density we find, N (H I) = 4.5 × 10 20 cm -2 and N (H 2 ) = 3 × 10 17 cm -2 and with the E ( B - V ) value derived from the existing archival International Ultraviolet Explorer spectra.