Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observatory is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Yale University, and the National Astronomical Observatories of China.
Robert Owen Evans, OAM was an Australian minister of the Uniting Church in Hazelbrook, New South Wales, and an amateur astronomer who holds the record for visual discoveries of supernovae (42).
The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) is a national, non-profit, charitable organization devoted to the advancement of astronomy and related sciences. At present, there are 30 local branches of the Society, called Centres, in towns and cities across the country from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia, and as far north as Whitehorse, Yukon. There are about 5100 members from coast to coast to coast, and internationally. The membership is composed primarily of amateur astronomers and also includes numerous professional astronomers and astronomy educators. The RASC is the Canadian equivalent of the British Astronomical Association.
The Supernova Cosmology Project is one of two research teams that determined the likelihood of an accelerating universe and therefore a positive cosmological constant, using data from the redshift of Type Ia supernovae. The project is headed by Saul Perlmutter at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with members from Australia, Chile, France, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Adam Guy Riess is an American astrophysicist and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. Riess shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
The known history of supernova observation goes back to 1006 AD. All earlier proposals for supernova observations are speculations with many alternatives.
John "Jack" Borden Newton is a Canadian astronomer, best known for his publications and images in amateur astrophotography.
A luminous red nova is a stellar explosion thought to be caused by the merging of two stars. They are characterised by a distinct red colour, and a light curve that fades slowly with resurgent brightness in the infrared. Luminous red novae are not related to standard novae, which are explosions that occur on the surface of white dwarf stars.
Nicholas B. Suntzeff is an American astronomer and cosmologist. He is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the Mitchell/Heep/Munnerlyn Chair of Observational Astronomy in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Texas A&M University where he is Director of the Astronomy Program. He is an observational astronomer specializing in cosmology, supernovae, stellar populations, and astronomical instrumentation. With Brian Schmidt he founded the High-z Supernova Search Team, which was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 to Schmidt and Adam Riess.
Thomas Boles is a Scottish amateur astronomer, discoverer of astronomical objects, author, broadcaster and former communications and computer engineer, who observes from his private "Coddenham Observatory" in Coddenham, Suffolk, United Kingdom. He is known for having discovered a record number of supernovae. The main-belt asteroid 7648 Tomboles is named in his honor.
Puckett Observatory is a private astronomical observatory located in the state of Georgia. It is owned and operated by Tim Puckett. Its primary observation goals are the study of comets and the discovery of supernovae. To facilitate the latter goal it sponsors the Puckett Observatory World Supernova Search whose astronomers have discovered 369 supernovae.
The Palomar Transient Factory, was an astronomical survey using a wide-field survey camera designed to search for optical transient and variable sources such as variable stars, supernovae, asteroids and comets. The project completed commissioning in summer 2009, and continued until December 2012. It has since been succeeded by the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), which itself transitioned to the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2017/18. All three surveys are registered at the MPC under the same observatory code for their astrometric observations.
SN 2010lt is a supernova located in the galaxy UGC 3378 in Camelopardalis. It was discovered by amateur astronomers Kathryn Aurora Gray, her father Paul Gray, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and David J. Lane of Stillwater Lake, Nova Scotia, Canada. Upon discovery, Kathryn Aurora Gray became the youngest person to ever discover a supernova, being 10 years old when she did so. The previous record was held by the 14-year-old Caroline Moore.
Time-domain astronomy is the study of how astronomical objects change with time. Though the study may be said to begin with Galileo's Letters on Sunspots, the term now refers especially to variable objects beyond the Solar System. Changes over time may be due to movements or changes in the object itself. Common targets included are supernovae, pulsating stars, novas, flare stars, blazars and active galactic nuclei. Visible light time domain studies include OGLE, HAT-South, PanSTARRS, SkyMapper, ASAS, WASP, CRTS, and in a near future the LSST at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
SN 2014J was a type-Ia supernova in Messier 82 discovered in mid-January 2014. It was the closest type-Ia supernova discovered for 42 years, and no subsequent supernova has been closer as of 2023. The supernova was discovered by chance during an undergraduate teaching session at the University of London Observatory. It peaked on 31 January 2014, reaching an apparent magnitude of 10.5. SN 2014J was the subject of an intense observing campaign by professional astronomers and was bright enough to be seen by amateur astronomers.
The Astronomical Society of New South Wales (ASNSW) is an amateur astronomy club in the state of New South Wales, Australia, founded in 1954.
The All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) is an automated program to search for new supernovae and other astronomical transients, headed by astronomers from the Ohio State University, including Christopher Kochanek and Krzysztof Stanek. It has 20 robotic telescopes in both the northern and southern hemispheres. It can survey the entire sky approximately once every day.
NGC 1255 is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 69 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Fornax.
SN 2018cow was a very powerful astronomical explosion, 10–100 times brighter than a normal supernova, spatially coincident with galaxy CGCG 137-068, approximately 200 million ly (60 million pc) distant in the Hercules constellation. It was discovered on 16 June 2018 by the ATLAS-HKO telescope, and had generated significant interest among astronomers throughout the world. Later, on 10 July 2018, and after AT 2018cow had significantly faded, astronomers, based on follow-up studies with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), formally described AT 2018cow as SN 2018cow, a type Ib supernova, showing an "unprecedented spectrum for a supernova of this class"; although others, mostly at first but also more recently, have referred to it as a type Ic-BL supernova. An explanation to help better understand the unique features of AT 2018cow has been presented. AT2018cow is one of the few reported Fast Blue Optical Transients (FBOTs) observed in the Universe. In May 2020, however, a much more powerful FBOT than AT 2018cow was reportedly observed.
