Circular No. 6627

Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams,INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION Mailstop 18, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. IAUSUBS@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or FAX 617-495-7231 (subscriptions) BMARSDEN@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or DGREEN@CFA.HARVARD.EDU (science) URL http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/cbat.html Phone 617-495-7244/7440/7444 (for emergency use only)

SUPERNOVA 1997bs IN NGC 3627

R. R. Treffers, C. Y. Peng, and A. V. Filippenko, University of California at Berkeley; and M. W. Richmond, Princeton University, report the discovery on Apr. 15 UT of a supernova (R = 17.0 +/- 0.2) located about 13" west and 67" south of the nucleus of NGC 3627 (R.A. = 11h20m15s.1, Decl. = +12o59'22", equinox 2000.0). This is the first supernova found as part of the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (the direct successor of the former search at Leuschner Observatory), which is conducted with the fully automated 0.8-m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope. An Apr. 10 frame (limiting mag 17.6) shows no image at the location of SN 1997bs. A CCD spectrogram (range 320-800 nm, resolution 0.7 nm), obtained with the Lick 3-m Shane reflector on Apr. 16 by Filippenko, A. J. Barth, and A. M. Gilbert (also of Berkeley), shows that the object is a peculiar type-II supernova (formally known as type IIn), dominated by relatively narrow (FWHM = 1000 km/s) Balmer emission lines on a featureless continuum. There are also many weaker Fe II emission lines. SNe 1973R and SN 1989B also occurred in NGC 3627.

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