GRB afterglow detected by Amateur Astronomer
Our Pretoria Centre colleague, Berto Monard, became the first amateur
astronomer to discover a gamma-ray burster's fading afterglow.
Berto identified the object on July 25th just over 7 hours after the initial GRB outburst.
Now named GRB 030725, the burst was first detected by HETE-2, the NASA/MIT High Energy Transient Explorer-2 spacecraft, which relayed the co-ordinates to astronomers world-wide. The AAVSO then used its International High-Energy Network to transmit the co-ordinates to its active team of amateur astronomers
Herewith Berto's message to friends and fellow enthusiasts:-
Dear astro friends,
I have pleasure in announcing another very likely SN discovery. It is not official yet and still needs to be approved and coded by IAU.
This SN suspect was visible on three consecutive images made on the morning of 12 Sep 2002. It is situated to the SE of the centre of the equatorial (again!) galaxy NGC 2642. This is a good looking (again!) face on spiral galaxy (type SBbc) at an approximate distance of 60 Mpc. It could be closer though! This galaxy is rising from its solar conjunction.
The object was confirmed on this mornings images (13 Sep) and the brightness has increased from 15.8CR to 15.6CR in 24 hours.
According to my estimates a typical SN type II from there would peak around 16.7CR, which therefore may indicate a good probability that this is a type Ia which will eventually reach 14.8CR.
The SN position coincides with the beginning of a spiral arm at the end of the bar. A bright foreground star is just North of the SN suspect.
This, I believe, is a worthy conclusion of a glorious winter season on the highveld with many clear nights.
Kind regards,
Berto Monard
Bronberg Observatory / CBA Pretoria
South Africa