a second year grad student doing his first observing run somewhere in Europe is reporting a naked eye supernova in the galactic plane in the Sagittarius constellation
twitter feeds from somewhere across the Atlantic say
"wow, it is really bright, and I know it can't be Venus"
01.04.09:
Early indications suggest the presence of Hα and OIII lines, and there are indications that the emission is highly variable.
One message suggested evidence for periodicity, or at least quasi-periodic oscillations, possibly indicating prompt formation of a slow pulsar.
There are clear anecdotal indications of steady brightening, "like,wow, like its coming straight at us, man".
One early preprint has already appeared on arXiv/astro-ph discussing climate impacts and the effects on the upper atmosphere of the prompt radiaition, including prompt hemispheric extinction if the SNe is as close as 70 pc, which is not excluded by early lower bounds on the parallax.
All the early reports are from junior graduate students and undergrads,
I hear an associate professor at MIT thinks he can pipe the twitter feed to a pager so that senior astronomers with actual telescope override authority will hear about this.
A postdoc in Germany is rumoured to be setting up a facebook group, and photos will be posted on Flickr real soon now.
The GTC tried to get a prompt image, but apparently the camera saturated.
rumoured naked eye SNe in sagittarius - UK photos
A staff astronomer that tried to suggest the students look for high proper motion was shouted down after the second celebratory beer
the supernova has been tentatively named "Earl Grey", and is considered to be "in the bag"
latest twitters suggest clouds have moved in and the source has disappeared
waiting for US observers now
third star on the left
then right
and stay on it until morning
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Where I live, this kind of thing is considered unlucky if done after 12am.
This is either an April Foolâs joke, or it is true. If itâs true, fill your pockets with jam because weâre all about to be toast! And cash in those Icelandic junk bonds, QUICK!
One early preprint has already appeared on arXiv/astro-ph discussing climate impacts and the effects on the upper atmosphere of the prompt radiaition, including prompt hemispheric extinction if the SNe is as close as 70 pc, which is not excluded by early lower bounds on the parallax.
Sounds like that Niven story - Inconstant Moon I think?
So if this really happened, what would we expect to hear first?
Where I am it is not the time zone of my laptop
and it is considered unlucky to try to blog while doing 8^H65 mph on the I-5...
Moderately Unbalanced Squid: Yes. That's a fun story. You can read it here: http://superkuh.ath.cx/~superkuh/Library/Fiction/Inconstant%20moon/Inco…
inconstant moon's premise is super-flare on the Sun
_Allowed_ O III, surely? Or are we thinking ring ionisation à la 87A
(Actually this is the only April fool that's given me that being-fooled-half-second. Just think of the fun getting a spectrum with our echelle-that-only-goes-down-to-mag 4...)
I was thinking more "student sees some red and some green colour" - I mean what else could it be?
You are a bad man.