Preface

Since 1981, of all the supernovae brighter than 15th magnitude, more than half were found by amateurs (either as sole or shared discoveries), and most of these were found visually. Some of the recent amateur finds have been important ones, contributing much to our knowledge of the subject. Slowly and steadily a growing number of amateurs have become involved in this search, and the number of observers who have been successful is also on the rise.

The key to success (assuming adequate resources and equipment) is to search as many galaxies as possible on a regular basis. Your chances of seeing a supernova will increase with the number of galaxies you survey. The search must be continued for some years, for supernovae are both rare and notoriously unpredictable; a year or more may pass when no bright supernovae happen to appear, and a short-term effort always seems to produce false alarms and unverifiable results. A continuing search can be mounted either by several very energetic individuals, or by larger groups of observers who pool their more modest observations.

These efforts, of course, have to be seen as part of a much larger search effort, which includes everything being done in this direction by both amateurs and professionals who search with other kinds of equipment. The more people who work at it, the more thorough will be the overall results. It will be less likely that supernovae in a nearby galaxy will escape detection, and more likely that a supernova will be found early in its history. Such simultaneity of effort may seem like competition to those individualists who want their own discovery on record, but it is the search itself that is good for science, and that is the focus.

Up to the present, many supernovae have been found by accident. This indicates that searches are not thorough enough, and it is possible that some supernovae bright enough for significant study are being missed altogether.

Visual observers using amateur telescopes can normally only survey galaxies within the range of about one hundred million light years from the earth. More distant galaxies appear too tiny in the eyepiece, and in most cases, supernovae in such galaxies are too faint to be seen anyway. The brighter, nearby supernovae are precisely the ones which scientists need to study in greatest detail in order to unravel the mysteries of these spectacular explosions and to create theories which can then be applied to the study of objects deeper in the universe. With a systematic search program, amateurs with visual telescopes can play an important role in finding these brighter, nearby supernovae and thus further the progress of astronomy, science, and human knowledge.

In writing this manual I am indebted firstly to Dr Janet Mattei, director of the AAVSO, and her technical staff who read this manuscript at every stage of production, and to James T. Bryan, Jr., for reading the manuscript and making many valuable suggestions. I am also indebted to Steve Lucas, founder of "Sunsearch", and to long-time AAVSO member Tom Cragg, who read an early version of the manuscript and offered encouragement and help. Also, I am indebted to a great many friends, both amateur and professional, who have helped me in many ways to learn the gentle art of hunting for supernovae, and who have helped me in making discoveries.

My hope is that many others will learn the art, and will become even more effective at it than I have been.

Robert O. Evans
Coonabarabran, N.S.W., Australia
October 1993