Circular No. 7618

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/iau/cbat.html Phone 617-495-7244/7440/7444 (for emergency use only)

POSSIBLE SUPERNOVA IN NGC 3079

B. Swift, W. D. Li, and A. V. Filippenko, University of California at Berkeley, report the discovery by LOTOSS (cf. IAUC 7514) of an apparent supernova in unfiltered images taken with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT): "The new object is located at R.A. = 10h01m57s.33, Decl. = +55o41'14".6 (equinox 2000.0), which is 6".3 west and 25".4 north of the well-known starburst galaxy NGC 3079. Available photometry for the new object (measured after subtracting a template image observed on 1998 Nov. 21 UT): 2001 Apr. 17.2 UT, > 19.0; 25.2, 18.3; 26.2, 18.4; May 1.2, 18.1; 2.2, 17.7 (under bad conditions). Adopting a distance modulus of 30.75 for NGC 3079 from LEDA (http://cisr.univ-lyon1.fr/ ~leda/), the absolute magnitude of the new star is only about -12.7, similar to the type-IIn SN 1997bs (Van Dyk et al. 2000, PASP 112, 1532); this may be a superoutburst of a luminous blue variable rather than a genuine supernova. Other explanations for the apparent faintness of this new star is that it is intrinsically faint, or suffers from huge amount of extinction in the very dusty host galaxy, or both. A finding chart can be found at http://astron.berkeley.edu/~bait/2001/ngc3079.html."

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Host galaxy info: v = 1125 km/s, 7.9' x 1.4', 11.54, SB(s)c;LINER Sy2

SN type info: Ic

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