Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Nebula

pease1 writes "The BBC is reporting on an amateur astronomer in the US who has detected, using a tiny 3-inch telescope and a CCD camera, the emergence of a young star from the cocoon of gas and dust in which it was born. The discovery image is here. Within hours, some of the largest telescopes on Earth had been redirected to image the new find. If you have a larger telescope and are heading out this weekend, here is a good finder chart, as this object has been sighted visually."

Comments

You might remember me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such amateur-astronomy instructional films as "Point that Scope Up, Not at your Nude Neighbor" and "Sun Viewing: the Sad Tale of Blind Bobby".

If you call this 800 number, you can get a special deal on my Comet Kahoutek documentary.

Not "just..."

[brownpau]

>this is an honest-to-goodness new star that
>just started lighting up the surrounding nebula.
Well, strictly speaking, since M78 is 1,630 light years from Earth, it hasn't *just* started lighting up. ;)

Re:It makes me wonder ...

[MissMarvel]

Many of the objects amateur astronomers observe can be found on the NGC/IC Project website. This is a particularly fine reference because it includes many corrections to the current NGC(New General Catalogue) and IC(Index Catalogue).

As a point of interest, Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory and a team member of the NGC/IC Project, was instrumental in assisting McNeil in securing telescope time on the giant 8-meter Gemini telescope in Hawaii so followup observations of the newly discovered nebula could be made.

Other members of the NGC/IC Project team are Harold Corwin, Steve Gottlieb, Wolfgang Steinicke,Brent Archinal, Steve Coe, Glen Deen, Jenni Kay and Bob Erdmann.

Amateurs drive discovery

[jkmullins]

Many people don't realize that a very large percentage of new celestial bodies are discovered by amateur astronomers with only small scopes, or even no scopes at all. Professionals, when working professionally, tend to focus on particular spots in the sky, studying a single object to learn everything they can about it. Amateurs, on the other hand, look at objects all over the night sky, and are more likely to see an object not previously charted. These discoveries are then focused on by the professionals to pour over with the large scopes and do the big science on, but it's always nice to see an amateur get his/her due in the discovery of a new object.

Re:Amateurs drive discovery

[Tenfish]

There's three categories where most of these amateur discoveries usually happen. New comets, new asteroids, and measurements of variable stars. Sometimes amateurs will refine measurements of variable stars, or they will sometimes discover that a star is variable when it was previously not thought to be.

This one is really exciting because it's a discovery in a category where amateur discoveries are very rare.