A fruitful collaboration between Lulin Observatory and citizen scientists

The GREAT Lab at the Graduate Institute of Astronomy is a member ofthe ATLAS survey team and, in 2024, discovered SN 2024ggi in thegalaxy NGC 3621, one of the closest core-collapse supernovae to Earthfound in the past decade, at a distance of about 21.7 million light-years.Assistant Professor Ting-Wan Chen obtained very early observationswith the 40 cm SLT telescope at Lulin Observatory just 14 hours afterthe explosion, and combined LOT spectroscopy with SLT photometry tocarry out Lulin’s first coordinated supernova follow-up campaign. Thestudy was led by the National Central University team, together with aninternational collaboration and intensive follow-up observations bycitizen astronomers in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which provided valuableearly-time photometric data. The results show that the supernovabrightened rapidly at early times, became bluer in color, and exhibitednarrow emission lines, indicating that the explosion was strongly affectedby dense circumstellar material. The study was published in TheAstrophysical Journal.

圖/天文所提供