You're gonna love this :-)

[NickH]

In another AN scoop, here we have a sneak preview of a forthcoming application which will enable the amateur astronomical community to follow up on alerts issued by projects such as the Palomar Transient Factory & SWIFT. Providing the possibility to observe events like supernova's as their light increases and then fades away, or the afterglow of a GRB will hopefully encourage amateurs to record their own measurements of these events as part of citizen science projects.

Building upon ideas discussed during meetings held at Caltech between AN Equipment consultant Nick Howes and the PTF team, led by Shri Kulkarni, director of Mt Palomar and the WM Keck Observatory, and following on from initial work by Dr Ben Ritchie of ESO/OU, this new Windows based application from Chris Shillito will form part of the hugely successful EQMOD Project suite. Using ASCOM standard interfaces a wide range of mount types will be supported from the humble EQ3-2 synscan upwards. As with other EQMOD project software this application will be freely distributed.

Compared to ACP which is $$$$, and this is free...I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to Chris and also Ben Ritchie who did a shed load of work earlier on a similar plan..

Proper Galaxy Zoo.. (well Supernova Zoo!)

[daz]

Now this looks fun!!

Excellent work Nick/Ben/Chris - look forward to seeing this develop!

[Toadeh]

So, they find something, send a message around using this app deeley, it points your scope at the area, you record the infor, share it online and with them?

Sounds like a nifty idea

[NickH]

They (PTF)_ were detecting up to 1000 transient events a night.. now, Keck is in Hawaii, Palomar is in California, when they go offline (i.e daylight), they had no follow on coverage...ergo the meetings I had with them to try to get that...24/7 coverage...

Any decent sized scope (10" SCT etc) will be able to do follow on work for high mag supernova or GRB light tails if they happen..

It's very very cool, something I have pushed for , for ages an now a reality

[oldfruit]

I think its great. Whilst i might not be that experienced yet i read how the contributions of amateur astronomers is vital to the continuing gathering of up to date information. The recent Jupiter impacts being good examples.

This must be one of the few fields in science where professionals and amateurs can work together on an almost even footing.

Fascinating stuff.

[NickH]

People interested may want to start reading up on photometry and supernova

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l67185t40270447m/fulltext.pdf

LBNL Supernova Photometry group

Photometry Exercise

All good stuff!