Latest results on SN 2011fe

I've created a web page which contains the latest results from my measurements of the SN from the RIT Observatory, and a little tiny bit of scientific commentary.  I'll try to keep it up to date as the SN fades.  Right now (Sep 26, 2011), the SN is fading in B and V, but is starting to make the small rise to secondary maximum in I-band.   You can find this page at

http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/ritobs/sn2011fe/sn2011fe.html [1]

The decline rate of this event is just about in the middle of the range for all Type Ia supernovae: it faded by 1.17 mag in the first 15 days after B-band maximum light.  We can use this decline rate to estimate its absolute magnitude: M(B) = -19.27.  That absolute magnitude, combined with its apparent B-band magnitude at peak light m(B) = 9.92, yields a distance modulus of (m - M) = 29.19.  That, in turn, yields a distance of D = 6.9 Mpc, which agrees well with other distance estimates to M101.

In short, the SN seems to be a pretty typical Type Ia event so far ....