[vsnet-chat 627] Re: False alarms, ISN & Co.

[Taichi Kato <tkato@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

Dear Steve, Mirko, Stefano, the ISN, the CBAT and other Supernovae Enthusiasts:

   One thing I would like to add regarding SNe discovery and confirmation.

   As some may know, one who is mainly dealing with discoveries from Japan
is having monthly articles in some major Japanese popular astronomical
magazine.  This article tells how each discovery (comet, minor planet,
nova and supernova) was treated and confirmed/denied.  Since this article
is public, those who are interested and are familiar with Japanese can
have an easy access how each discovery report was processed.

   From these articles and discoverer's interview articles frequently
appearing in this and similar magazines, I have an impression (note it's
personal) that those our locally concerned with "new objects" are not so
interested in extra-solar system objects, neither in "already discovered"
objects.  It seems to me they deal with the discoveries of supernovae or
novae just only because the objects are "new".  Of course, there are still
a lot of people, as Kiyota-san mentioned, to whose enthusiasm we owe much
of SNe confirmation, but the majority of this community does not seem to
be so interested in SNe or novae, as some of members have confessed in
such articles.  It is one of the causes of my regret that this lack of
interest may have caused a substantial delay in the confirmatory process,
seemingly non-ideal (at least to the discoverer) and unsatisfactory
confirmatory observations, the potential lack of desire in learning how
SNe or novae are astrophysically important, and the delay of information
to the special-interest community because of the report usually solely
taking this route rather than as a form of an alarm to the local, easily
accessible, professional observers, as was frequently done in novae
(V1500 Cyg was a good example) by the late Honda.

   I propose the CBAT may also make such official reports on each confirmatory
process, with which the discoverer can assess how his or her report was
treated, and the information was delivered to the list Dr. Marsden calls it
(IAUC 6739) to include every possible and willing observer to make
confirmation.

Best regards,
Taichi Kato

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