I report the discovery of a transient broad-H \alpha point source in the outskirts of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1404 , discovered in archival observations taken with the MUSE integral field spectrograph .
The H \alpha line width of 1950 km s ^ { -1 } FWHM , and luminosity of ( 4.1 \pm 0.1 ) \times 10 ^ { 36 } erg s ^ { -1 } , are consistent with a nova outburst , and the source is not visible in MUSE data obtained nine months later .
A transient soft X-ray source was detected at the same position ( within < 1 arcsec ) , 14 years before the H \alpha transient .
If the X-ray and H \alpha emission are from the same object , the source may be a short-timescale recurrent nova with a massive white dwarf accretor , and hence a possible Type-Ia supernova progenitor .
Selecting broad-H \alpha point sources in MUSE archival observations for a set of nearby early-type galaxies , I discovered twelve more nova candidates with similar properties to the NGC 1404 source , including five in NGC 1380 and four in NGC 4365 .
Multi-epoch data are available for four of these twelve sources ; all four are confirmed to be transient on \sim 1 year timescales , supporting their identification as novae .