SN 2002bl
M. Armstrong discovered a SN on March 2.9 at a mag 17.0, which was revealed
to be a hypernova. It is the fifth example of hypernova, but somewhat
more distant. The position is about 5" west and 9" north of the nucleus
of the highly tilted barred-spiral galaxy UGC 5499. The spectrum of this
object was obtained with Keck-I telescope on Mar. 7. It showed a quite
resemblance with 'hypernovae' about 2 weeks after the explosion. The recession
velocity of UGC 5499 is 4753 km/s (NED), which shows good coincidence
with that of a hypernova, SN 1998ey (4839 km/s). The maximum of this
hypernova was mag about 16.8, which is also in good agreement of the discovery
mag of the new object (vsnet-campaign-sn
364). Radio observations were performed by E. Berger et al. on March
8. They reported that no radio source was detected at the position of
the SN down to a 2-sigma limit (vsnet-campaign-sn
372).