V341 Arae is a 10th-magnitude variable star in the southern hemisphere , discovered over a century ago by Henrietta Leavitt but relatively little studied since then .
Although historically considered to be a Cepheid , it is actually blue and coincides with an X-ray source .
The star lies near the edge of the large , faint H \alpha nebula Fr 2-11 , discovered by D. Frew , who showed that V341 Ara is actually a cataclysmic variable ( CV ) .
His deep imaging of the nebula revealed a bow-shock morphology in the immediate vicinity of the star .
We have carried out spectroscopic monitoring of V341 Ara , and we confirm that it is a nova-like CV , with an orbital period of 0.15216 days ( 3.652 hr ) .
We show that V341 Ara is remarkably similar to the previously known BZ Cam , a nova-like CV with a nearly identical orbital period , associated with the bow-shock nebula EGB 4 .
Archival sky-survey photometry shows that V341 Ara normally varies between V \simeq 10.5 and 11 , with a characteristic timescale ranging from about 10 to 16 days .
V341 Ara lies well off-center within Fr 2-11 .
We speculate either that the star is undergoing a chance high-speed encounter with a small interstellar cloud , or that the nebula was ejected from the star itself in a nova outburst in the fairly distant past .
At a distance of only 156 pc , V341 Ara is one of the nearest and brightest known nova-like variables , and we encourage further studies .