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I see legendary visual supernova hunter Bob Evans has died aged 85 on the 8th November. Some of the older BAA members may remeber the work he did
This is sad news indeed. Bill Bryson devotes a delightful chapter to Bob Evans in his best-selling book ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’. I bet he’s up there somewhere sharing stories with Leslie Peltier and George Alcock, the three great visual supernova hunters.
My profile pic might be of interest to some. Its me looking through the transit telescope at Palermo National Observatory that Piazzi used to discover dwarf planet Ceres on 1st Jan 1801I remember meeting Bob in 2009 – he was visiting family in Cheltenham and had asked if he could borrow a telescope. Our local club (Cotswold AS) invited him to one of our observing evenings but as it was very wet he gave us a talk about supernova patrolling instead. A really nice guy.
Attached photo from the evening is a little poor, sadly (Bob is at the right).
CallumAttachments:
Sad news indeed. I never met Bob Evans, but was fortunate enough to be in Sydney in 1982 and share with members of the Sutherland Astronomical Society in the excitement of his early supernova discoveries. With his amazing knowledge of the sky, he often reminded me too of George Alcock.
That is really sad news. I met Bob at the TA AGM in 2006 September. At that meeting we had Tom Boles, Mark Armstrong, Maurice Gavin and Ron Arbour, all of whom had discovered supernovae using imaging. By that time Bob had discovered around 40 supernovae, all visually. Bob’s talk was excellent and should be around on video somewhere. I do remember him passing on greetings to those of us who lived “in the northern polar regions”. I don’t think he fancied observing from here!
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