As per usual the BOSS team have great pleasure in supplying IIS readers with breaking news.
On the 25th July Stu Parker from New Zealand discovered his 18th Supernova. This is quickly turning into the most exciting and interesting object discovered todate.
Discovered at a faint 18.3r magnitude in NGC6925 (Microscopium) the object is rapidly brightening, glowing at 17.2r in my image from last night.
Greg Bock was away at Leyburn and was able to quickly get the confirmation image, while Colin Drescher (the numbers guy) away at Qld Astrofest was able to supply highly accurate positional and magnitude data. I logged the possible discovery on the new TOCP page and sent the advice to CBAT, we also made contact with our professional astronomer collaborator at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. She advised she would obtain a spectra asap using one of the 6.5m Magellan telescopes she had time on.
Well things are really happening quickly. Put it this way, when Stu gets an email from Dan Green at CBAT noting "Stu, looks like you may have found something exciting" and the 10m SALT telescope in South Africa
http://www.salt.ac.za/ and the 6.5m Magellan scopes in Chile
http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/Magellan/ are buzzing you know you have achieved something special.
So it looks like there will be some very real science to come from this discovery and of course BOSS will keep you informed as things progress.
In the next day or so the object will be given an official designation but for now you can see the images here under PSN J20342262 -3158236.
http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/snimages/
So again, a huge congratulations to Stu Parker and his wife Lynne who supports him in his dedication. They both run a dairy farm in New Zealand and somehow Stu manages 600 plus images per clear night, then blinks them and still manages to get the cows milked. I can't tell you how many hours this involves but it's lots!
Goes to show that YOU an amateur astronomer can contribute to the science of this great hobby with pretty much standard off the shelf gear, you just got to add time and effort.
PeterM.
