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KAIT Discovery and Robotic Follow-up Observations of a SN Candidate in NGC 5054: PSN J13165936-1637570

ATel #5715; W. Zheng, W. Li, A. V. Filippenko (UC Berkeley), and S. B. Cenko (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
on 1 Jan 2014; 22:43 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Weikang Zheng (zwk@umich.edu)

Subjects: Optical, Supernovae

Referred to by ATel #: 5717

We report the discovery, with the 0.76-m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) at Lick Observatory, of a possible new supernova in the nearby galaxy NGC 5054 (z = 0.005855). The new object, dubbed (by the IAU) PSN J13165936-1637570, is located at (J2000.0) coordinates RA = 13:16:59.36, Dec = -16:37:57.0. Following discovery in an unfiltered image obtained at 13:49 UT on 2014 Jan. 01, KAIT autonomously began a sequence of triggered follow-up observations in the U, B, V, R, I, and clear (roughly R) filters beginning only 5 minutes later. Using stars from the USNO-B1 catalog for reference, we measure R = 16.4 mag at this time. Unfortunately, a previous KAIT image taken just one day earlier, near dawn on 2013 Dec. 31, was too shallow to provide useful constraints, and no recent earlier images were taken of the same field. Spectroscopic observations are encouraged. A finding chart is available at the following website: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~zwk/findingchart/PSN_J13165936-16375704.jpg .