Hi all,
Congratulations to Stuart Parker (New Zealand) who has discovered his 7th supernova (CBET 2080 - SN2009mk) in the last 6 months in PGC474 (ESO293-34) a very lovely Galaxy in Phoenix.
The supernova is relatively bright at around mag 15, so imagers here may like to follow this up and monitor it's progress, I think it may have brightened since discovery.
The CBET advice notes the involvment of the "Backyard Observatory Supernova Search' (BOSS) team in confirming and reporting Stu's discovery. So the team is officially up and running and we are very proud of the fact that we have such a reliable group of people who are available at all hours to assist. From my point of view this shows just how well amateur astronomers can (and should) work together, even at great distances.
Interesting how this unfolded. When Stuart imaged this galaxy he was only able to get one image before being clouded out. I tried to image at 1am but by then the galaxy was way down in the trees. We made contact with several astronomers around the world including Brazil and Chile desperately seeking a confirmation image, but all had same issues as Stu - cloud. Joseph Brimbacombe in Cairns was able to come to the rescue and using his RCOS 20 inch in New Mexico (USA) he was able to image the galaxy just 15 degress above the horizon at 1.30pm Brissy time yesterday. Joes input was extremely valuable and provided the confirmation image. I was able to also get an image last night. When the CBET was announced it didn't include Josephs contribution instead using my image as the confirmation and I am still not sure why, so let me acknowledge here that Joes was the first confirming image and we are indeed grateful to him and very happy to have him involved with BOSS team. Infact Joe is THE most prolific provider of follow up images for just about every supernova discovered this year, you can see his images at
http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/snimages/ his input will be very valuable in the coming months and years.
Thank you Joe.
I have seen several lovely images now coming from New Zealand amateurs of this latest from Stu, no doubt some will be posted here soon.
Also had contact from Professor Brian Schmidt (SkyMapper) who notes that amateur supernova hunting won't be affected too much from SkyMapper, indeed they will be complimenting amateur discoveries with their follow up.
An interesting note is that when Colin Drescher put the data together he noted how very close (only 4 arc seconds away) this SN was to 1988ai discovered by Bob Evans in 2003 (one of Bob's rare none visual discoveries) from an ESO red survey film taken November 1988. The supernova was not typed (ie 1a, 11, etc) due to it's discovery many years later, so it will be interesting to see the spectra from this new supernova.
I wonder if a slight position error could make this the same but perhaps strange object some 21 year later, hmmm no doubt some wiser men will follow up this christmas star and let us know soon enough.
Amazing where all these discoveries have taken us in the past year. So there is still plenty of room for amateurs to contribute to the science and fun of this hobby.
Thanks for the Christmas present Stu!
PeterM.
I will join the team as well 
