cf. vsnet-alert 5854 http://vsnet.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/Mail/alert5000/msg00854.html Dear SN watchers, IAUC 7616 informed that the spectra of SN 2001bb have been taken by Lick and KPNO, which reveal that it is of type I SN, but the subclass is not yet uncertain. It can be a luminous SN Ia, or hypernova. On the disk of the host galaxy IC 4319, there is a bright foreground star GSC 6727-739. Its GSCmag (nearly blue mag) is 14.35 +/- 0.37, and absent from USNO_A2.0. So this magnitude should not be used for the comparison with unfiltered or red(or yellow)-filtered CCD image. The temporal comparison stars (extracted from USNO_A2.0) is available at http://vsnet.ggw.org/asras/snimages/reference/i4319.jpg . SN 2001bb is about at the half way between this star and the nucleus of the galaxy. The discovery image can be seen at: http://astron.berkeley.edu/~bait/2001/sn2001bb.html , whose "star 1" is GSC 6727-739. The follow-up magnitude estimate (and of course the spectral follow-up) is extremely urged for this "peculier" SN. Sincerely Yours, Hitoshi Yamaoka, Kyushu Univ., Japan yamaoka@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp