------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 1179 1997 Mar 31 11.56UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England.Telephone/FAX(01256)471074Int:+441256471074 INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.CO.UK GMH at AST.STAR.RL.AC.UK WORLD WIDE WEB http://www.demon.co.uk/astronomer ------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPERNOVA 1997ab IN ANONYMOUS GALAXY H.-J. Hagen and D. Reimers, Hamburg Observatory, report the discovery of a supernova (mag 16.2) on a spectrum taken on Feb. 28. SN 1997ab is first visible on an objective-prism plate taken on 1996 Apr. 11 with the Calar Alto 0.80-m Schmidt telescope for the Hamburg Quasar survey; it was automatically selected on the digitized plate as a low-redshift QSO candidate due to its ultraviolet excess and its strong H-beta emission. From the objective-prism spectrum, we derive mag B = 14.7 +/- 0.5. A CCD image taken with the Calar Alto 2.2-m telescope shows a bright point source 7" southwest of the galaxy centre; the supernova is located at R.A. = 9h51m00s.4, Decl. = +20o04'24" (equinox 2000.0). The spectrograms taken with the same instrument show SN 1997ab to be of the rare emission-line Seyfert-1 type II, similar to SN 1987F, with a blue underlying continuum. Besides strong Balmer lines, the spectrum shows broad Fe II emission bumps and a strong infrared Ca II triplet. The redshift of the parent galaxy (from sharp, forbidden H II-region lines O III and S II) is 0.012. SN 1997ab faded in eleven months by < 2 mag and was at least 2 mag brighter in Apr. 1996 than the parent galaxy, which is a dwarf irregular of mag 17. IAUC 6589 SUPERNOVAE The Supernova Cosmology Project, plus N. Walton and P. Ruiz-Lapuente at the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) reports sixteen supernovae found with the Cerro Tololo (CTIO) 4-m telescope in their High Redshift Supernova Search, as given below. SN 1997 UT R.A. (2000) Decl. R z type 1997ac Feb. 10 8h24m05.21 + 4 11'22.6 23.1 0.32 Ia 1997ad Mar. 5 8 22 32.64 + 4 09 57.7 22.8 ? 1997ae Mar. 5 8 23 58.68 + 3 47 53.9 23.9 ? 1997af Mar. 5 8 23 52.67 + 4 08 44.0 22.3 0.58 Ia 1997ag Mar. 5 9 58 53.35 - 0 20 29.0 23.2 0.59 Ia 1997ah Mar. 5 10 00 02.92 - 0 23 30.7 23.6 0.73 Ia? 1997ai Mar. 5 10 48 57.61 + 0 31 50.0 22.3 0.45* Ia 1997aj Mar. 5 10 55 52.98 - 3 59 02.3 23.8 0.58 Ia 1997ak Mar. 5 10 56 53.15 - 4 13 50.9 24.4 0.35 Ia? 1997al Mar. 5 10 57 30.31 - 3 14 49.7 24.0 0.62 Ia 1997am Mar. 5 10 57 31.52 - 3 13 48.3 22.9 0.42 Ia 1997an Mar. 5 10 57 43.97 - 3 47 18.2 24.3 0.49 ? 1997ao Mar. 5 13 47 05.42 + 2 08 59.5 24.3 ? 1997ap Mar. 5 13 47 09.90 + 2 23 57.5 24.2 0.83* Ia 1997aq Mar. 5 13 47 09.90 + 2 27 37.2 24.3 0.51 ? 1997ar Mar. 5 13 47 31.98 + 2 26 16.0 23.0 0.36 ? IAUC 6596 (extract) Guy M Hurst