Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
IAUC 6739: Notice
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Circular No. 6739
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
Mailstop 18, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
IAUSUBS@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or FAX 617-495-7231 (subscriptions)
BMARSDEN@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or DGREEN@CFA.HARVARD.EDU (science)
URL http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/cbat.html
Phone 617-495-7244/7440/7444 (for emergency use only)
NOTICE TO CONTRIBUTORS AND SUBSCRIBERS
Some respondents have expressed worry that the procedure given on
IAUC 6737 for reporting CCD and photographic discoveries of supernovae and
novae will incur delays in announcement that could jeopardize significant
scientific results. For some years we have been routinely relaying all
remotely promising reports privately to spectroscopists for confirmation,
and almost every observer in the world able and willing to make these
confirmations is on our list. The delay is in securing spectroscopy.
By accepting discoveries on the basis of compliance with the first three
requirements (accurate position, second-night confirmation, nonappearance
on appropriate earlier images), we hope to be able significantly to
reduce the delay--albeit at the expense of occasionally
announcing observations of some unknown long-period variable star instead.
With a record 109 genuine supernovae already recognized in 1997 (in addition
to numerous false alarms), some organization of the activity is clearly
essential if it is to remain manageable.
Proponents of the use of e-mail exploders and the WWW for the widespread
dissemination of incomplete and uncertain reports suggest that such use
provides more of a guarantee that "science" can be done, conducted in a
timely manner, and that nothing will be lost. Even if an occasional
imperfect report could be salvaged in this way, the whole process is
extraordinarily inefficient and carried out with an enormous "spinning of
wheels" by hundreds of participants. A lofty scientific ideal
is all very well, but complaints would surely be rampant if the confusion
led to misplaced credit for a discovery. Several serious observers have also
mentioned that they would be embarrassed to publicize in the internet claims
that might be erroneous. It has been proposed that those who disseminate
discovery reports in the internet should be sure also to inform the Central
Bureau; it would also help if those who do contact us were to let us
know if they have also distributed their reports widely to others.
One point on IAUC 6737 referred to the unreliability of some
sources of positional information about minor planets.
The most longstanding electronic source for listing the minor planets
in a particular region of the sky at a given time is the CBAT/MPC
Computer Service, which has reliably provided this information for
the numbered minor planets for well over a decade. A new version of this
feature, freely available in the WWW at
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/ps/CheckSN ,
also includes many unnumbered minor planets (although for these the data
are not fully guaranteed). While a general-purpose facility, it is
particularly suited for checking candidate supernovae, for it will show
the minor planets in the vicinity of a specified M, NGC, IC, UGC or MCG
galaxy at the time in question.
(C) Copyright 1997 CBAT
1997 September 11 (6739) Brian G. Marsden
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