• Question: I recently read about a man in New Zealand who has discovered more supernovas by himself then all of the oter supernova hunters in the wworld together.(including scientific instatutions) How could he do this?

    Asked by purplebug123 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I haven’t heard of him, but since astronomy involves a lot of looking at the right place at the right time (think how big the sky is and how many telescopes we have) he may just have got lucky!

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hmm I haven’t heard of this. I know a lot of amateur astronomers do a lot of amazing work both discovering and following up local supernovae though. The sky is so big it’s impossible for professionals to look everywhere at once (although some are planning to try with something called the Large Synoptic Sky Survey).

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I’ve not heard of him, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was true. Lots of scientists, whether they are professional or not, get really focussed on one particular thing, and if they have the patience to work on that and only that for their whole career, they can build up a huge pile of evidence that nobody else could get by just looking at the problem occasionally.

      I have a friend who is doing the same with fossil fish skulls – he has described more in the last 5 years than anyone else has in the last 100 years!

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      Basically because the sky is big, like everyone has said, and there are only a few telescopes in the world so there are a lot of bits of the sky that no-one is looking at, at any one time. Astronomy is one of the easiest sciences in which anybody (with a reasonable amateur telescope) can make a big contribution.

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