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Stan Walker wrote:
> I'm a little uneasy about the way amateur astronomy is headed at the moment.
> There seems to be a great desire to find new things - minor planets,
> supernovae and new variables - but little desire in some cases to do
> anything more than find these objects.
Kato-san replied:
> Your comment just clearly illustrates my thoughts, too. Ar least in
> our country, there is a concept of a "new object hunter", and some people
> indeed call themselves with this title in popular astronomy magazines.
> My feeling is that many of these "new object hunters" have little interest
> in finding out the nature of their newly discovered objects. What matters
> more is whether the object is called "NOVA" "SUPERNOVA" etc. on IAUCs,
> or when these discovery announcements are issued. Once the object has
> given a "NOVA" designation, they seem to feel that their work is complete.
The problem is not limited to amateurs. I keep track of all the
supernovae mentioned in the IAU Circulars. As you may know, the number
of discoveries has grown tremendously in the past decade:
1995: 57 SNe
1998: 161
2001: 296
Let's look at the year 1998. How many of those 161 SNe have been
studied in detail? Let me do a quick search through the ADS system
for papers published on these 161 events ...
1998bu, 1998S, 1998bw, 1998aq, 1998de, 1998A
That's 6 out of 161. Hmmm.
To be fair, most of the supernovae discovered are very faint,
many are long past maximum light, and some are immersed within
their host galaxies. But it still seems a bit of waste, in some
respects.
Michael Richmond
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