Congrats to Dave Grennan on his SN discovery.

Hi Dave Mc,

Yes your right, I did discover the first Nova from Ireland many years ago. This brings back memories. It was a novelty in those days, it hit the main RTE and BBC news. Finding Novae as you know is a lot more difficult as compared to SNs, because you don't know where in the sky to find them, hence may be the one nova in two or three years. This was before CCD cameras. I remember I took about 80 hours of exposures using photo film.

I think Dave did very well in discovering his SN when compared to all the competition thats around. However, I did mention to Dave G that his search fields are really fertile when compared to the competition. Most of the "factory" searches that "harvest" SNe are mainly in the mid latitudes. The likes of Tom Boles in the UK at our latitudes has had very good success rates in recent years in the polar regions.

It's ironical that when the IFAS AOP was initiated 3 or 4 years ago, there was a lot of enthusium as team work, but it is difficult to coordinate a team program. I know in the UK that there SN searches are done by individual observers, whereby in the US you have the Puckett team that analyse the comparison images in teams. The idea of IFAS AOP was a similar model to the Puckett approach. I still believe this approach will work with an Irish team.

I really hope that Dave's SN discovery will be an inspiration to others on the IFAS board to try this out.

Eamonn A

www.kingslandobservatory.com

Dave is not only an inspiration, but a great source of pride to anyone who has met him.
A modest and unassuming guy with a wonderful sense of humour, he is a great ambassador for the new wave of Irish astronomers who are making such a mark with their recent discoveries.Congratulations.

I managed to acquire a quite deep image of 2010ik this evening. The attached image has a limiting magnitude of +21.2 and is the result of 62 x 60 second images. This observation puts the supernova at +18.6. Astrometry and more details on the image.



Thanks to all again,

Dave

Well done Dave on that amazing discovery. It is a real testament to your skill and dedication but also a deserved reward for the contributions you have made to Irish astronomy.

John

Well done Dave,

Michael.

Is there nothing this man can't do?:laugh:

Congrats Dave.