About the Supernovae category

This category is for topics related to potential discoveries or recoveries of supernova explosions.

How do you figure out if something is a transient or an asteroid? I’m new so sorry :sweat_smile:

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Hi, :slightly_smiling_face:

Check the ‘single image exposures’. If there is only one exposure it is probably an asteroid. You can check this by clicking on:

Direct link to JPL query

And you can do a manual search via:

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sb_ident.html#/

But that is quite complicated to explain now.

Asteroids appear mostly as green/blue blobs, dark blue blobs or bright red blobs. The shape is often not quite round but a little bit irregular.

Also a good way to find out if an object is a supernova candidate or not. Look in the SDSS layer. If the object is visible in the DECaLS and Legacy Survey layers and also in the SDSS layer it can not be a supernova. Because SDSS is a search from more than 10 years ago. Supernovae do not last that long. And of course the same goes the other way around. If the object only appears in the SDSS layer and not in the other layers it could be a candidate too.

Unfortunately in the SDSS layer are no ‘single image exposures’ available. So to determine if an object in SDSS is a candidate or not is much more complicated.

In addition, you should always check whether the candidate has already been reported. The following sites should always be checked.

Simbad Search
NED Search
The TNS (Transient Name Server)
The RBS pages (Rochester Bright Supernovae pages)

Useful links:

https://skyserver.sdss.org/dr14/en/tools/chart/navi.aspx?ra=172.97594&dec=47.13086&opt=

https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/forms/calculator.html

https://ps1images.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/ps1cutouts

Kind regards from Ine :stars::dizzy:

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Thank you!

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