Participants wanted for the Daventry Nova Survey.

Participants wanted for the Daventry Nova Survey - I am looking for a
maximum of 20 people to take observing roles in the second phase of
the Daventry Nova Survey.

Please visit http://www.icrar.org/website/nova.htm for further
details.


Martin Nicholson

Martin Nicholson writes about the Daventry Nova Survey. I visited the
web site he mentions in the post above. It claims

"My suspicion is that the percentage of novae in the range 12 to 16
that get reported is extremely close to zero. The expected number,

based on the article, would appear to be in the hundreds."

What is this article Martin mentions? It can be found at this URL:

http://www.jfmto.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Nova.htm

The article attempts to estimate the number of novae which will
occur in the Milky Way by counting stars in bins by
magnitude, and assuming that some constant fraction of the stars
in each bin will go nova. The article is not explicit about its
calculations; I cannot figure out if the numbers shown in a small
table are "novae expected per year" or "novae expected over the
course of a study performed by the British Astronomical Association."

In any case, it is not reasonable to claim that hundreds of novae
should be detected per year in the Milky Way. As I have posted
before on this topic, there have been several studies published in
the refereed literature on the subject of nova rates in nearby
galaxies. For example, Sharov (Astronomy Letters 19, 147, 1993)
estimates a rate of about 30 per year in M31 and only about 1 per
year in M33. Della Valle (ASP conference on the Extragalactic
Distance Scale, 1988) estimates the rate in M33 to be 4 +/- 2
novae per year. Since the Milky Way's luminosity is (very probably)
between that of M31 and M33, closer to that of M31, a decent estimate
for the total number of novae in the Milky Way each year would
be closer to 20 or 30 than "hundreds," especially if one is guessing
the number which might appear from Earth to be brighter than
magnitude 16 in the optical.

The fact that the Daventry Nova Survey is advertising for people
who must pay to participate leads me to think poorly of those who
make these unjustified claims.

I ask the moderator(s) to consider carefully approving further
articles on this topic.


Michael Richmond

Martin and Michael quote different sources to back up their viewpoints.
This is good and healthy and what newsgroups are intended for.

Michael then spoils it by seeking to censor views that do not agree
with his own. Not debate, not argue but just to censor. Even stranger
in a way is the fact that it is not even the content of the posting he
objects to but one sentence on one page of the website the poster
mentioned!

For an academic do this, and I see from your email address Michael that
you are an academic, seems somewhat excessive.


[[Mod. note -- I would remind everyone that our newsgroup charter
(http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/sar/charter.html) bans (among other things)
"personal attacks". -- jt]]

wrote:

Martin and Michael quote different sources to back up their
viewpoints.
This is good and healthy and what newsgroups are intended for.

Michael then spoils it by seeking to censor views that do not agree
with his own. Not debate, not argue but just to censor. Even stranger
in a way is the fact that it is not even the content of the posting
he
objects to but one sentence on one page of the website the poster
mentioned!

For an academic do this, and I see from your email address Michael
that
you are an academic, seems somewhat excessive.

[[Mod. note -- I would remind everyone that our newsgroup charter
(http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/sar/charter.html) bans (among other
things)
"personal attacks". -- jt]]

Let me quote a small section of the charter, available
at the URL provided by the moderator:

Personal attacks, crossposts irrelevant to astrophysics/
astronomy research, commercial advertisements,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
political discussions, or posts originating from
addresses that cannot receive e-mail will be rejected.

My objection to Martin Nicholson's posts is that he is
advertising for people to join a survey which requires
members to pay for the privilege of using a particular
telescope. If he were to stop charging for the service,
then I would drop my suggestion to his continued
postings in this newsgroup.

I would not, however, drop my claims that he is
inflating the number of novae which one might
reasonably expect to be discovered by the Daventry
Survey.

Michael Richmond