From: Rachel A. Gibbons (ragibbons@lbl.gov)
Date: Mon May 03 2004 - 14:30:56 PDT
From Dan Green, Re: our circular submission.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 03 May 2004 14:36:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Dan Green <dgreen@cfa.harvard.edu>
To: RAGibbons@lbl.gov
Cc: green@cfa.harvard.edu
Subject: faint supernova suspects
Hi, Rachel. Here's the scoop. As you may or may not have heard,
there's been considerable discussion between the Central Bureau
and the supernova community over the last year or two regarding
giving (or not giving) supernova designations to very faint
objects that are not confirmed spectroscopically as supernovae.
The basic questions are: (1) does it skew the statistics of
supernovae with designations in unknown and unuseful ways, and (2)
does it serve any useful purpose to treat them like confirmed
supernovae? We developed basic requirements for brighter supernovae
that we have stuck to for years (as noted at the CBAT website),
and these state that one must have either two nights of data or
spectroscopic confirmation (or both). While it has been argued
that lack of motion in 45 minutes of HST imaging generally
(but not absolutely) precludes the objects being in the solar system
(a possible exception being if a distant transneptunian object
were near a stationary point), the new IAU Working Group on
Supernovae (WGS) accepted a proposal that I helped to develop whereby
a new webpage co-established and co-hosted by CBAT and WGS would
be created for such problem "unconfirmed supernova candidates",
in which a preliminary "official" designation will be given for
reference and the data would be posted promptly on the webpage for
the community to have access to. This webpage was to have been
developed by the end of 2003, but this did not happen.
So what we decided to do last week was to create a temporary
webpage now, in which your objects would be posted with the new
provisional designations (along with some other objects). I hope
to have this up and running sometime this week, and will let you
know when I get there. We'll then formally announce the creation
of the new webpage on an IAU Circular (also this week). The
forthcoming CBAT/WGS webpage will permit interactive posting by
the actual observers/discoverers (who will have to apply for and
be placed on a list of allowed users, so that not just any hacker
off the street can post to it), but the temporary webpage that I'll
put up this week will be entirely maintained by me (i.e., nonautomatic
and noninteractive). For any objects that are confirmed
(spectroscopically or otherwise) as supernovae, they will then
be removed from this unconfirmed-objects webpage, given formal
permanent supernova designations, and announced on IAU Circulars
as usual.
Hope this all sounds reasonable to you. I'll be in touch within
a few days. (Nobody is likely to observe these objects anyway
right now, with full moon tomorrow).
Kind regards,
Dan
---------------------------------------------------------
Daniel W. E. Green [dgreen@cfa.harvard.edu]
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
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