**New M101 SN ?!

Announcement: New Forums

We are excited to announce the launch of our new forums! You can access it forums.aavso.org. For questions, please see our blog post. The forums at aavso.org/forum have become read-only.

Girish Duvvuri, Chi Hang Kan, Aylin Garcia Soto, and I have just confirmed the presence of the supernova candidate PSN J14021678+5426205 in M101. We observed with Wesleyan University's 24-inch Perkin Telescope at Van Vleck Observatory in Middletown, Ct. We measured it as mag 17.1 (unfiltered); however, this measurement might be suspect because we observed at a high airmass. We will obtain a more reliable V-band magnitude shortly.

Best Regards,

Colin

Although this object is listed as a PSN (possible supernova), it is not a SN. The referenced CBAT was quite ambiguous about this, but I think that the two images were meant to show that the transient was detected in November 2014 and January 2015. I aligned the two images from the CBAT, and they clearly show the transient in both. Thus, the PSN designation was somewhat misleading.

This object isn't present in CRTS or the DSS. I suspect that it is a high-amplitude variable star or a supernova imposter.

Colin

Took 10 minute exposures and stacked 6 to 8 images for each.  BVRI mags using star #133 from photometry table 14410ABE:  -Paul (BPAD)

filter
mag
error

B
18.826
0.151

V
17.299
0.060

R
16.631
0.043

I
16.048
0.031