4th Supernova discovery for Peter Marples - PGC8012
HI all,
well, here's another great effort from the BOSS team.
This time, Peter Marples found a 14.9 magnitude SN suspect in a pretty spiral galaxy called PGC8012 in Eridanus.
It's Peter's fourth discovery, the last one being on 9 June 2009 in NGC5967, so it's been a long time between drinks.
Now, it's even more remarkable because only a few minutes earlier in the night, Peter found a new object in IC1810, which upon checking, determined that the Catalina survey had detected this new object only 2 days earlier. So, after an initial flurry of activity around IC1810, he got on with the job of checking his other images and then found this one in PGC8012.
So, effectively, he found 2 new SN in one night!! Fantastic!
After Pete called me to let me know about the new object in PGC8012, I managed to get the confirming image for him within minutes of his discovery, to prove that it wasn't an artefact in his imaging system, and I have posted a copy of my confirming image here for anyone who would like to see it, or image it.
Well done Pete, that makes 31 for the BOSS team now..
After all this, we also discovered that our BOSS mate in NZ, Stu Parker also imaged the new object in IC1810, but was also too late to identify it. So, BOSS efforts almost delivered 2 new SNe in one night. Not a bad effort.
Now, back to blinking my images from last night, I still have 160 to check!.
Thank you all.
As Greg notes I imaged IC1810 last night (3rd image of the night) and got very excited when I spotted a new object and then several minutes later got a bit deflated when it came through as being discovered by The Catalina Real Time Sky Survey.
Looking at my scope and gear under a beautiful sky I quickly came to my senses thinking crap I haven't spent all this money for nothing so I had better do something with it. About a dozen or so images later I find an absolute beauty.
I would like to thank Morm n Dard and all those in the academy....oops sleep deprivation thought I was at the Oscars. Seriously, the BOSS team really work so well together and when the adrenalin rush sets in and you don't know which part of the computer to click on next then Bockie and Colin take over the astrometry and photometry reporting etc it really makes it all a breeze.
Stu's successes are something we all aspire to. Top it off we are all great mates as well.
Thanks guys you and our associates around Oz are a great bunch!
We have received word from 2 major observatories and things are looking very good.
As I predicted my friend Terry finds a comet and soon after I find my next SN!
HI all,
we have just been advised that Peter's new SN has been measured spectroscopically from Chile not long ago, and has been confirmed as a young type 1a.
Wow, that only took 18 hours from notification to confirmation. Fantastic!!!
So, now the nail-biting wait for proof is over, we can sleep again.
Just have to wait for the CBAT designation now.
According to Nasa data, PGC8012 lies at about 80 Mparsecs (which is 260 million light years), so it is very far away indeed, but because it is a type 1a, it is relatively bright at about 15th mag. for such a distance.
Anyone care to see it visually? If so, you're seeing it as it occurred about 260 Million years ago.
Just made a positive observation of Peter's Supernova. in PGC8012.
I as able to get a number of brief observations using a 6mm Radian 304xmag and a 9mm Nagler 200xmag .
Seeing was about 6-10 but in moments of reasonable seeing was able to get a positive view
There is a 7.2 mag star which has to be put out of the field of view to see the galaxy but with the narrow field of the radian was able to positively see the galaxy and Supernova.
Well done again Peter.
Cheers
Hi Tony,
I'm trying hard to catch him, I guess he got a bit of a motivational bump from my last 2 discoveries
Of course, now we will have to update the scoreboard at Astrofest this year, it needs alot of updating now, and hopefully, there will be more to add to it by the next one!! (...but then....who am I to keep score?...)