HI all,
well Stuart Parker has been working overtime lately, and turned up yet another possible supernova in a very pretty spiral galaxy, NGC7125.
At this stage, i have analysed his images and sent a transient object advice to the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams, and we are now waiting for a spectral image to confirm the new object as a supernova.
The TOCP advice is designated as PSN J21491632-6042426 and the new possible SN is currently at mag 15.3 Red.
This discovery follows hot on the heels of his last discovery in PGC926 on the 26th June, i just don't know how he manages to hoover these things up so effectively....
When I was talking to Stu last night he still had 600 images to blink from the 1300 taken the night before! This SN Is a really good photo opportunity just for the 2 galaxies alone for IIspacers, though long exposures may make it difficult to get the SN separated from the core being so close. Now there is a challenge to you.
Below is a nice image taken some years ago by the legendary Jim Riffle.
So for me it's been 5000 images since my last discovery in January and who knows how many for Greg, Brendan and Pat. Likely to be over 10,000 plus images this year to date! So it really is needle in the haystack stuff that requires heaps of dedication - a big congrats to Stu.
Hi David,
Numbers and consistency help. 1300 galaxies in one night now with 2 rigs going. The closest I can get is about 300 in one night and that is not consistently. Also weather has been somewhat more favourable in the south of NZ than Brissy. I can't imagine what it is like to blink 1300 images the next day(s) - this alone is a mammoth job, so we are now looking at sharing that workload through Team Viewer software.
It's just a sensational effort from Stu and with Greg and Colin being able to do the astrometry and photometry and very quickly get these posted it helps Stu get on with what he does. The work Greg and Colin do is very accurate and reliable and has BOSS reports in good standing with the professionals we collaborate with.
Hi Dave,
yes, good question, how does he do it?????
Peter's answer is spot on. Stu has more clear nights, and uses two observatories now, one with a 14" scope and the other is an 11" scope.
Imaging large numbers is Stu's speciality due to his higher number of clear skies than us, and he has established an efficient set up to do just that.
Also, Peter, Brendan and I don't have clear access to the entire sky from our observatories due to local house and tree issues, but Stu's observatories are located in cleared paddocks on his farm, so his sky access is also much greater than any of ours. (for example, due to house interference, I usually cant see galaxies at declinations further than -60 deg.)
However, the real headache of course is that he has so much more blinking to do, which is the really hard part. This is one reason why Stu leaves the analysis and reporting to Col, or Peter, or me. Once he finds a good suspect, he leaves that part of the process with any of us who are available to help, while he gets on with the job of imaging, or blinking, or both!
To give you a comparison, I imaged and blinked 230 galaxies 3 nights ago last Friday night before I went to bed at 12 midnight. This was a very good number for me, but a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers that Stu can image. Since January 2012, I am averaging about 600 galaxies per month ( about 3,800 to date) for imaging and blinking, Stu could do at least 5 times as many in a good month, so he has 5 times the chance of finding something.
Stu can also image all night automatically while he sleeps without worrying too much about rain, which is something we would never do in Brisbane as it is to risky to leave the roof open unattended, so that also increases his numbers.