sn2016gxp – another amateur discovery confirmation

[Robin Leadbeater]

Possible supernova at2016gxp was discovered in NGC51 on 5th Oct by the US amateur POSS team at mag 18.6, too faint then even for the ALPY200.  On 12th Oct I was alerted by the POSS team that it had brightened considerably and asked if i could get a confirming spectrum. I managed to grab a quick 10 min exposure  spectrum though a gap in the clouds which,  although noisy, was good enough to confirm it as type 1a

https://wis-tns.weizmann.ac.il/object/2016gxp.

A full moon and cloudy nights prevented me trying again until 23rd when I was surprised to find it further increased in brightness to around mag 15 so I swapped the ALPY from the 200 to the standard 600 grism.  This latest spectrum (2 hour exposure) confirms it as 1a, probably a peculiar superluminous type as suggested by the NUTS team in ATel 9645 

http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=9645

The plot below shows my ALPY 600 spectrum of sn2016gxp (black) overlaid on a spectrum of sn2007if (red) 5 days post maximum from the SNID library.

ngc51 is well placed high in the sky at the moment, making sn2016gxp an interesting target for anyone interested in testing the limiting magnitude of their low resolution spectrograph

Robin

Attachments:

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   sn2016gxp_20161023_824_SNID_small.png
   

[Jeremy Shears]

Congatulations Robin, another great result!

I will be mentioning your work on spectroscopic confirmation of SNe during my Review of theYear at the AGM later

Jeremy

[Robin Leadbeater]

Thanks Jeremy,  

Three confirmations so far this year (bme,gfr and gxp)  This latest spectrum was also a test of my camera upgrade from ATK314 to the more sensitive ATK428 which seems to be working well.

Robin

[Steve Cuthbert]

Good catch Robin, will make a for a nice discussion at the weekend 😉

Steve

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