A New Luminous Outburst from SN 2009ip
ATel #4334; A. J. Drake (Caltech); S. Howerton (Arkansas City, KS); R. McNaught (ANU); S. G. Djorgovski, A. A. Mahabal, M. J. Graham, R. Williams (Caltech); J. Prieto (Princeton); M. Catelan (PUC Chile); E. Christensen, S. Larson (UA/LPL)
on 24 Aug 2012; 21:35 UT
Credential Certification: Andrew J. Drake (ajd@cacr.caltech.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Supernovae, Transient, Variables
Further to Drake et al. (2010, Atel#2897), we report the discovery of a new bright
outburst from spectroscopically confirmed LBV (Supernova Impostor) SN 2009ip
(Maza et al. 2009; CBET#1928, Berger et al. 2009, ATEL#2184;
Smith et al. 2010;
Foley et al. 2011) in
images taken by the Siding Spring Survey (SSS).
During the normal operation of the CRTS SN Hunt project, an outburst of SN 2009ip
was discovered in subtracted images of NGC 7259 taken on 2012
July 24th UT.
In further observations taken on
August 14th
the source was found to have brightened to V=16.8(0.1). This is the highest state observed
in SSS data since it was first observed 2005.
Additional SSS observations taken
on Aug 16th
and Aug 19th
show the source remaining at similar brightness (V~16.8 +/- 0.1).
Based on the distance to host galaxy NGC 7259 (m-M =31.55; NED), the SSS
photometry
suggests that absolute magnitude of SN 2009ip is currently Mv < -14.5.
Given the current very high state of this LBV, we request spectroscopic follow-up
to determine the nature of this outburst.
