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 [...]
Almost all candidates on the list have been observed. Some were junk, but most were something real, like a supernova, an AGN, or a star. Now we only have to take some calibration data and burn the data to a dvd. I’m really looking forward to a few hours sleep. Good night!
/Jakob
The atmospheric conditions have degraded a bit, but we’re still collecting data.
Features of supernova spectra are very broad and therefore look like wiggles. Tonight we’re indeed lucky. All the spectra apears to have these wiggles in them. We’ve found a few type Ia supernova so far tonight. Apparently the selection of candidates via the supernova Zoo has been very effective.
/Jakob
We’re lucky! Clear skies. The seeing is marvelous which means that we can obtain very good spectra.
/Jakob
The conditions are now excellent (seeing of 0.7 arcseconds). I hope it stays like this all night. This is really exciting!
/Jakob
We’re sitting in the control room of WHT awaiting the sunset. Before sunset we should take some calibration data and finalise the list of candidates. New candidates are sent to us by e-mail all the time. Tonight we’ll have a go at some candidates we didn’t observe yestereday or need to get an additional spectrum [...]
Using quick and dirty reductions we have begun identifying the candidates. We have found both type Ia and type II supernovae. It’s soon twilight and we have to take some calibration data before sunrise. Tomorrow night we’ll continue observing. We are pretty tired, so we’re looking forward to a good days sleep.
/Jakob
We now have 11 targets left which we can do tonight. Some of the candidates, which are no longer visible tonight, we aim at observing tomorrow. It’s just a couple of hours until twilight, but we should be able to make it. When the night begun the list looked so long, but now it feels [...]
It’s almost midnight here at La Palma. The sky is much clearer now, although occasionally some clouds are in the way. We have taken spectra of a bunch of candidates, but there’s still plenty of objects to visit. Thanks supernova hunters for keeping us busy tonight!
/Jakob