THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 657 1992 August 6 19.30 UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England. Telephone/FAX(0256)471074 Int:+44256471074 Telex: 9312111261 Answerback: TA G JANET BOXES: GMH at UK.AC.CAM.ASTRONOMY.STARLINK TELECOM GOLD: 10074:MIK2885 GMH at UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.STARLINK.ASTROPHYSICS STARLINK: RLSAC::GMH ------------------------------------------------------------------- X Per ----- Professional Astronomers have informed us that this star is under- going a rapid brightening in the infra-red similar to it's light-curve following the 1974-1977 'disk-loss' event. Amateur observations of the visual magnitude are required over the next few weeks. SUPERNOVA 1992as IN ANONYMOUS GALAXY J. Maza, University of Chile; and L. Wells, Cerro Tololo In- teramerican Observatory, report the discovery by L. Gonzalez (CTIO), on a 20-min unfiltered IIa-O plate taken by M. Wischnjewsky (University of Chile) and C. Muena (CTIO) with the CTIO Curtis Schmidt telescope on Aug. 1.146 UT, of a supernova (mpg about 18.5) located 2".7 west and 4".3 south of the nucleus of a galaxy at R.A. = 21h00m36s, Decl. = -44 50'.8 (equinox 1950.0). Confirmation was made by E. Rubenstein (Yale University) from B and V CCD images ob- tained on Aug. 4.236 with the CTIO 0.9-m telescope. Spectrograms were obtained on Aug. 4.178 at the CTIO 1.5-m telescope by S. Zepf (University of Durham), and on Aug. 4.276 at the CTIO 4-m telescope by L. Lu (University of Wisconsin), showing that this object looks very much like the type-II supernova 1986L about 3 weeks past maxi- mum. Given this identification, the redshift of the parent galaxy is about 0.025. IAUC 5575 SUPERNOVA 1992at IN ANONYMOUS GALAXY R. H. McNaught, Anglo-Australian Observatory, reports his dis- covery of an apparent supernova (mag about 18) in an anonymous barred spiral galaxy. M. Hartley exposed both the discovery B plate on Aug. 2.5 UT and the confirmatory U plate on Aug. 4.6 with the U.K. Schmidt Telescope. The supernova is located at R.A. = 21h24m03s.88, Decl. = -37 13'01".7 (equinox 1950.0; uncertainty 0".4 in R.A., 0".5 in Decl.), just beyond the end of a spiral arm, with offsets from the galaxy's center being 5".6 east, 10".9 south. A nearby star about 0.5 mag brighter than the supernova has end figures 09s.97, 12'41".2. IAUC 5577 Martin Mobberley (Assistant Editor)