The hunt goes on
The atmospheric conditions have degraded a bit, but we’re still collecting data.
Wiggles
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
Fantastic seeing
We’re lucky! Clear skies. The seeing is marvelous which means that we can obtain very good spectra.
/Jakob
Excellent conditions
The conditions are now excellent (seeing of 0.7 arcseconds). I hope it stays like this all night. This is really exciting!
/Jakob
Awaiting the sunset
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 of. There are som very faint challenging targets we still haven’t decided whether to include or not. The wheather is much better to night. Almost no clouds at all. This is going to be an exciting night!
Typing of candidates
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
11 targets left
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 like we’re running of targets. We need more candidates! Please help us find them!
/Jakob
Midnight posting
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
Starting observing
Here at the William Herschel telescope we (Isobel and Jakob) have started to observe the candidates found by the supernova hunters. There were some clouds earlier, but the sky is getting clearer. The first spectrum is taken right now and we got a long list of excting candidates from the Supernova Zoo to investigate.
Supernova Hunt Underway Again!
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 a robotic telescope from the Palomar Transient Factory in California sending us candidate supernovae from the galaxies it scans, and, as in August, we have two astronomers from Oxford standing by at the William Herschel Telescope on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. They will observe the best of the candidates that you identify.
Our last experiment in August was very successful, and so this time we’re looking at a much larger set of data in an attempt to work out just how common each type of supernova really is. The Supernova Hunt site has been live since Friday, and already there are no shortage of candidates for us to investigate further. But of course, we need more! If you didn’t get the chance to take part last time, please do spend a few minutes reading the tutorial, and enjoy hunting for supernovae! Any feedback or comments are very welcome, either here or over on the Galaxy Zoo forum. And, we’ll try to post regular updates from WHT as to how the observing run progresses. Let’s hope for good weather – you can keep an eye on that here using the webcams (during daylight!) and satellite feeds.
Mark
Galaxy Zoo 