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Hi there Paul, this might be a bit long (again) but might be help.
I have been taking images for several years now so I have a pretty good list of my own reference images as well as images from other amateurs like Alex Wassilieff New Zealand and also from the Digitised Sky Survey images.
I had quite recently imaged NGC6722 several times so it was immediately apparent that a "new" star even though faint, was on the 25 second mage that I took on the 20th. I then took several more images and yep was still there so no image faults. The next step was to check for known minor planets - there is a minor planet list available that you put the RA & Dec of the area you are interested in and it lists minor planets down to something like 20th mag. Next check for known variable stars, again there is a list you can go to as above and put in RA, Dec. So both are clear. Now an image say 1/2 or so later and there is no movement in the suspect so that helps to rule out a new and undiscovered minor planet (but more images later cement this). So now some friends help out. Greg Bock and Colin Drescher get a fairly accurate position and magnitude of the suspect from my images using Astrometrica and CCD soft. I call Brendan Downs to supply a confirming image and he is at Chess, bummer. So Steve Quirk in NSW obliges immediately and calls me with yup it's in his images as well and he has an accurate position.
So by now it's about 11.30pm. I have spoken to Bob Evans and it is then decided to send an email to the CBAT (IAU) and wait and see what they announce. In next day or so a South African Berto Monard himself a prolific supernova discoverer responds to my email and he also confirms the new star and this all adds to the evidence. The next 2 nights I image another 150 galaxies looking for another supernova ... and on it goes all the while re improving my reference images.
So there is a process, and it worked pretty well. I still got excited though when I saw the first image of that star and then realised that it hasn't existed for some 240 million years.....
Cheers
Peter
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