[vsnet-chat 5532] how not to discover novae

[Fraser Farrell <fraser@trilobytes.com.au>]

Readers may be interested to know the circumstances surrounding my 
independent discovery of V4743 Sgr.

I was camped by the shore of Lake Eyre (Australia's biggest lake) at the 
time - far from any phones or Internet connections! - during a site 
investigation trip for this December's total eclipse. Here's the relevant 
bits from my trip report:

- - - -

"The last time I was here - in 1992 - the Lake was 
full of floodwaters. Tonight it was totally dry, with a salt crust as hard 
as concrete.

"Because of the full moon and a strong wind raising dust, the sky on 
Saturday night was nowhere near as dark as it can get out here. But with a 
chart of the recently discovered Nova Sagittarii 2002 #2 in hand I decided 
to get the 8x42 binoculars out anyway. Found #2 at magnitude 7.9. Looked 
at a few other variable stars too. Then while hunting down some of the 
fainter Sagittarius blobs shown in Sky Atlas 2000, I noticed the star 
pattern east of M22 was a bit odd...there was a new 6th magnitude object 
visible. Assuming it was an asteroid, I sketched its position. After 3 
hours, sketched its position again, noticed it hadn't moved; wrote myself 
a reminder to email VSNET about it as soon as I got home, and went to 
sleep. It had been a long day, and there was another long day tomorrow.

"This object turned out to be my independent discovery of the _third_ Nova 
Sagittarii 2002. My first nova discovery, and Murphy's Law had 
prevailed....oh well. It's certainly the first nova discovered from Lake 
Eyre, and probably the first one ever discovered from below sea level."

- - - -

Should I call Sky & Telescope about this? Or Guinness Books?  ;-)



cheers,

-- 

Fraser Farrell

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