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Re: [vsnet-chat 6865] Discovering novae > What is this fuss about discovering novae all about? It seems to me > pretty straightforward. The first one to recognize a new object as a > nova and reporting it as such to the IAU, is the discoverer of the nova. > Someone who only realizes after the discovery that the object on his > prediscovery pictures is a nova, cannot claim to be an independent > discoverer. He can only claim that he has prediscovery pictures. This is > not unique. There are often pre-discovery pictures of novae. For intensive nova searchers (not restricted to Vello or someone else), "independent discovery" and "prediscovery detection" are totally different things. The difference between them may be even larger than a difference between a nova and a non-nova variable star ;-). And, what is more important to astronomy is, that this differentiation has been one of the most stringent reasons why nova discovery announcements are usually so delayed. The claimed reason for such a delay is, as is often heard from nova searchers, is "not to hinder other people's independent discoveries". This would sound like noble altruism, but clever people like you can surely understand what this statement would imply when the case is reverse (i.e. the discovery was made by a different person). Such a "game theory" would maximize the number of independent discoveries, but _at the expense of_ (otherwise feasible) early observations. Even worse, this strategy has been even (either explicitly or implicitly) endorsed by some of the professional community like the CBAT. We now have a very good timely example of "possible Nova in Sgr". As glimpsed from the available material, the things are in progress behind the scenes for the last several hours, and I would expect the discoverer is someone we are well acquainted with -- not a word has been directly heard from the discoverer. I would even expect in a forthcoming IAUC or CBET confimatory data or identification by e.g. Hitoshi Yamaoka or Brian Skiff, or some equivalent professional. They are forbidden to relay information under the name of masked "noble altruism". Anyway, things will become obvious within hours, a day, or more(?) This is another reason why I am tempted to endorse real-time nova detection alerts from ASAS-3 or other automated telescopes; such alerts will not only dramatically improve the early-stage nova science, but also dramatically improve the present situation from a different side. Regards, Taichi Kato
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