Hi All,
What a great post by Craig very thought provoking.
When I started searching for Supernova my main goal was to try to be the first in the world to spot the light from one of these events and get it reported. The science side of things I thought would take care of itself with the pros doing their stuff after that. Since then my understanding even though still at its infancy has improved. This has changed the way we search and how we talk to the pros. This has got to the point that as Peter says they stop their current programmes to follow alot of our discoveries. Therefore as a team we have the respect of the pros. This is very important for both sides as one professional said to me funding is very tight now and they are looking for accurate and reliable amateurs to do some of the “grunt“work so they are able to do the science. We have been feeding the Chile observatories a regular supply of Supernova over the past year to follow up on as Giuliano said to me a few days ago about SN2011hs a type II SN“ we got a GMOS spectrum last night, just beautiful !!Very good fishing guys !”
I have had emails/meetings from people that I would never of dreamed of at the start of my search programme including Brian Schmidt, Alex Filippenko ,Dan Milisavljevic,Nidia Morell, Giuliano Pignata and may others who I contact on a regular basis they are leaders in their field. This certainly makes all the work worthwhile and goes to prove that alot more information is needed. That is why I can never understand why so many supernova discoveries go unclassified as previous said the sexiness has gone out of supernova which I think is sad. However I think it is on a rebound and bright Supernova like SN2011iv reminds people of the importance of such research.
What I am saying here is I think as amateurs all we can really do is continue to supply this information as best we can to the pros and hope they can get the information they need to revisit the current theories that’s what science is all about isn’t it? From time to time something unexpected will come up and that is great!
I went to a supernova conference in June and also met alot of the above people. Talking about the two type Ia theories-this still very hotly debated. But the impression I get while listening to them is that the white dwarf in a binary system is favoured more than the Double Degenerate (DD) model. I have since read some papers on this and I am not so sure anymore. I have posed the above question to some of the above mentioned professionals to get their updated point of view. I just really hope that the new bright SN helps with that.
Stu
BTW thanks to all for the good wishes etc it does realy help
