41 cm Telescope performance over the same period

Within this same period of time (Dec. 18, 1994 to the end of April 1996), the 41cm backyard telescope played a purely supportive and supplementary role. There is no need to observe any galaxy with this telescope if it has recently been observed with the 40 inch telescope, or was observed as part of the U.K. Schmidt Supernova Search. With the 41 cm telescope, all observing is done under fully dark conditions. The working magnitude limit is generally about 15.7 mag. The observing conditions near the centre of the township of Coonabarabran are not as good as those on Siding Spring Mountain.

Despite this secondary role, a total of 13 267 observations were made in a period of 231 hours of observing. This made an average rate of galaxy observation of 57.4 galaxies per hour throughout the entire period. Details are listed in Table 2. Of the 41 cm discoveries, SN 1996X in NGC 5061 was by far the brightest found with either telescope, or by the Perth Observatory group. Of the 40 inch discoveries, SN 1995G in NGC 1643 was also just visible in the 41 cm telescope, using high magnification, when I already knew where to look for it. It would never have been discovered with this telescope however, as the galaxy was considered to be too distant, and it was not monitored. This supernova has therefore not been included in the results of the 41 cm search.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997