Just to let you know that the supernova zoo will be offline for most of this week. The search that feeds data to us, the Palomar Transient Factory, is undergoing some maintenance. They’re re-aluminising the mirror of the telescope to improve the sensitivity, which usually takes a few days during which the telescope can’t be [...]
Hello from the William Herschel Telescope, where I’m observing some of those lovely supernova candidates that have been pouring out of The Supernova Zoo lately.
It’s been a while since our last update. We’ve been running supernova zoo in a very serious way now for several months, and, after ironing out a few little bugs [...]
After a couple of trial runs in August and October, the hunt for supernovae is now back – and we need your help again! As before, we’re supporting the Palomar Transient Factory in their search for supernovae, and we have an upcoming observing run, this time at the Palomar 200in telescope.
We are hoping to keep the supernova hunt website [...]
Thanks to all of you who participated in our second trial of the supernova hunt! As with our first trial in August, it was very successful, and kept our WHT observers, Jakob and Isobel, very busy – as you can see from their blogs! In the 3 days that we ran the trial, 2089 of [...]
For those of you who took part in the Galaxy Zoo Supernova Hunt back in August – good news: the site is now back live, with an improved tutorial and interface. We hope that you like the changes that we have made.
A supernova is an exploding star, capable of outshining an entire galaxy. We have [...]
We’re nearing the end of the night now – and that cirrus that threatened earlier blew through quickly, leaving us with clear skies and generally excellent observing conditions.
We ploughed through 16 supernova candidates, which kept us on our toes, and a first look at the data shows that indeed many of them turned out to [...]
Greetings from the William Herschel Telescope at the Observatario del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, in the Canary Islands. Sarah and I have now arrived here, and tomorrow night, the 12th, we’ll join in the fun by observing some of the supernova candidates that you’ve identified in the PTF data. The weather here [...]