Uniting Church minister, Rev. Bob Evans of Hazelbrook, NSW, has been lauded in many places this week including the Sydney newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (30 Jan 03, p27) for discovering the supernova SN2003gd and thereby allowing the Hubble space telescope and astronomical observers on Earth to have a first-hand look at the death of a star. The spectacular explosion at the end of the life of some stars, called a supernova, may sometimes be seen by the naked eye, but more usually through a telescope.
This observation, on 13 June 2003, was Bob Evans' 37th visually observed supernova. He rapidly alerted the world's observing community using an internet-based system. It has been announced this week that later work by other observers, looking back through earlier observations, confirmed that the star that exploded had been a red giant star, some 500 times larger than our Sun. According to the Western Sydney Amateur Astronomy Group Inc., "Just before daybreak he identified a new supernova, called 2003gd, in the spiral known as M74 or NGC 628. The most peculiar thing about this discovery is the fact that Bob had managed to beat the northern hemisphere observers to the prize. M74 is a northerly galaxy and its presence low in the north eastern sky and near the city skyglow makes this an amazing feat." +++ Compiled by Peter Ellis +++ http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au http://www.ausgo.unsw.edu.au/SN-Oz-PressRelease-27Jan04.htm http://users.tpg.com.au/users/wsaag/documents/June03a.pdf http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m074_sn2003gd.html ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
