A supernova impostor in NGC 3362 ?

Forums Deep Sky A supernova impostor in NGC 3362 ? A supernova impostor in NGC 3362 ?

#580900
Martin Mobberley
Participant

Hi Robin,

I posted my image of Ron’s discovery on my Member page a few hours ago. However Ron has just e-mailed some rather depressing news. Ron spotted the almost identical position and so informed the TNS in a ‘follow-up’ observation that it appeared SN2010ct was in outburst and might be a LBV. HOWEVER, since then the Italian ISSP group have filed it as a new SN discovery. This means that Ron was the first to find and report full information on the object as a possible LBV, but, officially, is not the SN discoverer! Apparently the two objects are not quite in the same position so it seems to be just a horrible piece of bad luck! The TNS have apologised to Ron for this bad luck, all down to Ron’s vigilance in noting the almost identical position with SN 2010ct. Still, the similarity in position does seem hard to believe……….Ron is, understandably, gutted, as he’s checked 40,000 images since his last discovery and narrowly missed 15 SNe in the last 16 months.

Martin