Supernova Zoo news
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 you inspected over 2000 supernova candidates, answering more than 100,000 classification questions. The best of these were then passed to WHT for observation.
The first observing night had relatively poor observing conditions, but the second night was clear and plenty of zoo targets were observed. You can see a selection of the supernovae that you found and that were observed at WHT on the supernova zoo front page. Using the spectrograph on WHT, we were able to confirm these as supernovae and determine their types. We took spectra of more than 20 candidates identified by the zoo, and are now busy reducing and analysing that data.
Our plan now is to take the supernova hunt down for a short while, to make improvements to the tutorial and classification questions. Please do keep the feedback coming – the supernova zoo now has its own sub-forum where you can give us comments, and we will try to answer any questions that you might have. Our goal to have to supernova zoo support all of our Palomar Transient Factory supernova observing runs – and not just those at WHT – in the near future.
Thanks for all of your help!
Mark
12 responses to “Supernova Zoo news”
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- - October 21, 2009
Galaxy Zoo 
That’s really great news.
Great! 🙂
May I ask if you can give this blog a title? It’s easier to link to that way.. 😉
I am sure that all Zooites will be glad to oblige.
JKHC.
Hanny – done!
Thank you Kevin! 😉
I found an interesting composition in 302211. It appears to be two or three stars going supernova in the same frame. However, as a novice Zooite, it could be three bugs on the windshield.
That’s smashing. I am really looking forward to the next Apollo mission.
Oh, how thrilling!
I was awfully excited when I found a new spiral earlier. Has anybody watched BB3B recently?
Eagerly awaiting the next supernova re-launch … Good Stuff!
It agree with the author of article