Galaxy Zoo Supernovae from a technical standpoint
I’ve just finished writing up some of the more technical details associated with our recent supernova hunt. Â If you’re interested in how it all worked behind the scenes then head over here…
Cheers
Arfon
New supernovae found!
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, which we are confident is also a supernova from our raw data. What you can see here are the images of this object as they appear on the zoo. This is a great example of what a supernova will look like in the zoo images. The reason for this is that you can see some structure in the host of the supernova. In general if the transient object appears as in a blob, rather than a perfect circle, it is far more likely to be a real supernova, than a variable star. Although this is not a solid rule of supernovae screening, it is always good to know.
Thank you all for helping to make this observing run a real success. We will be sure to let you know our supernovae grand total soon enough but for now we are looking at in excess of 20 new supernovae. Let’s see if we can catch a few more!
Sarah
WHT supernovae finds update
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 are certainly hoping for this object to be a young supernovae.
So, why are new supernovae so good? Well, to begin with we want to know as much about supernovae as possible and the best way to do that is to catch them early and follow them. Certainly if this object is what we hope it is, it will be a good candidate for future follow up.
This really is some exciting science! Stand by for an update on what we find!
Sarah :0)
WHT second night prepped and ready to go!
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)
End of the night, and new supernovae confirmed
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 be supernovae as we had hoped, rather than other variables sources (such as variable stars). So excellent work!
Thanks to everyone who participated and helped to make a successful night of observation; we’ll try for a fuller report tomorrow on what we found. We also have one more night tomorrow night, when we’ll continue to look at candidates identified by the zoo, so keep checking in for updates!
Mark
WHT supernovae update
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 one type or another. We will keep you posted on the exact number of correct identifications, as well as their type, when we have reduced our spectra.
Exciting stuff!
Sarah
WHT supernovae identified!
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 below us. So, we’re definitely hoping for a few more positive identifications tonight.
Sarah :0)
WHT prepare for action.
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 image and scroll down. La Palma is the north-westerly island of the cluster of 5) and hoping that they don’t cause too many problems.
Greatly looking forward to getting some good supernovae observing in. Look out for more updates through the night.
Good fortune supernovae hunters!
Sarah
Galaxy Zoo paper on host galaxies of growing black holes submitted!
It’s usually me who is reminding people to go blog about paper submissions and acceptances, so it’s a bit embarassing that I forgot to remind myself last week to announce the submission of the latest Galaxy Zoo paper.
I’ve been working on it for a while, probably over a year. The paper took so long to finish because not only did we have to analyse a huge amount of data, it also took quite a while to figure out what it all meant. I kept producing new plots that showed trends that didn’t really make any sense to us. We therefore needed to take our time digesting what we saw and condensing it into a `readable’ paper. It still over 20 pages long and there are still many results for which we could only offer some speculation. It’s not an easy paper to summarise, so I will (for now) simply summarise it as: “the black hole growth in spiral and elliptical galaxies is due to completely different evolutionary scenarios.”
Or, as I will put it in my talk on Friday at the IAU Symposium on the black hole-galaxy connection:
The answer may depend on
(thanks to stellar on the forum!)
Unlike our previous papers, this is the first paper that we have decided to submit to the Astrophysical Journal. Now fingers crossed that the refereeing process goes well.
Greenwich meeting on Sunday
I meant to post about this earlier, so apologies for those who only read the blog and not the forum. My only excuse is that we’ve been busy hunting for Supernovae…
On Sunday 16th August, a motley gathering of Zooites and Zookeepers will be descending on the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. There are more details in the forum, but the general plan is as follows :
13.45 : Recommended Planetarium Show – The Sky Tonight Live. An ROG astronomer takes you around the night sky – a traditional, live planetarium show.
14.30 : Galaxy Zoo Tour of the ROG site – Led by Jim, not only an ROG astronomer but also developer on a future Zoo project. Meet in the Planetarium Foyer.
15.15 : Recommended Planetarium Show – Dawn of the Space Age. In the 40th year since the Apollo landings, the ROG’s new show looks back to how it all began.
16.00 : Meet the Zookeeper – In the ‘Discovery Space’ in the main ROG building. On the eve before the largest gathering of Zookeepers in history (for a team meeting) this is your chance to chat to some of the team who come from further afield. Confirmed victims attendees are Bill ‘NGC 3314’ Keel, Carie ‘Peas’ Cardamone and Jordan ‘Motivation study’ Raddick. I will also be making a less exotic appearance, but should have the first results from Galaxy Zoo : Supernovae to show off.
I’m afraid that it’ll be necessary to book tickets for the planetarium shows, but the astronomy displays provide more than enough to keep you busy otherwise.
Galaxy Zoo 
