I’ve just finished writing up some of the more technical details associated with our recent supernova hunt. If you’re interested in how it all worked behind the scenes then head over here…
Cheers
Arfon
After a couple of exposures, we are happy to say that we believe the object mentioned previously is a young supernova. This is great news.
Mark and I thought we would give you better feel for what we are doing here by showing you something visual to have a look at. This our latest target, [...]
Just over half way through or night and we are doing well again, in spite of some technical adversity early on. Our next target is a very exciting target. It is either a very new supernovae that has only been around for a few days, or it could be an asteroid. Here at WHT we [...]
One hour till sunset and Mark and I are ready for another fantastic night of supernovae observing. At the moment there is not a cloud in the sky, so let’s hope this good weather holds!
So far we have the Telescope set up and ready again, just waiting for darkness …
Sarah :0)
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 [...]
Just over half way through our first night now and we’re well on track. Mark and I are happy to report that we are currently taking data for our 9th object of the night. Thank goodness for clear skies!
Of the 8 objects we already have, we are confident that most of them are supernovae of [...]
It’s still early in our run here at WHT and we have already identified two supernovae! One Type Ia and one Type II (wikipedia them here), which is an excellent start.
Looking at the status of the weather, we have mostly clear skies. There are a few thin clouds about, but in general the clouds are [...]
Quick update from Mark and I here at the William Herschel Telescope. It’s three hours till sundown and we are already setup, which means we are ready to go as soon as night falls. We are keeping our eyes on the clouds, you can see the satellite pictures here (click on the weather [...]
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 [...]
I’ve just added in the latest batch of images taken by the Palomar Transient Factory last night. The PTF surveys large areas the sky every night looking for new supernovae. The images from these observations are then run through an automated pipeline which flags potential new candidates which we show to you.
One of the [...]