Dana Patchick

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James Dana Patchick (born March 23, 1957) is an American amateur astronomer, researcher, and discoverer of notable deep space objects. He discovered Pa 30, the celebrated supernova remnant of SN1181  Sky & Telescope magazine included Pa 30 as one of the top 10 News Stories of 2023.

By himself, or in collaboration with other amateur astronomers, he has discovered scores of notable planetary nebula. Another supernova – SN1987L – was discovered by him with a home built telescope.

Amateur Astronomy - early beginnings

Patchick began observing Messier objects in August 1971, using a 4 ½ - inch reflecting telescope. This quickly was upgraded to a 6 – inch reflector, and eventually he built an 8 – inch reflector from mail ordered parts. While still in high school, many hours of astrophotography were put in with the 8 – inch reflector. Observing and photography was undertaken from dark sky sites in the Santa Monica Mountains, in the nearby Mojave Desert, and at the dark sky site owned by the Los Angeles Astronomical Society.

Visual discoveries

A much larger 17 ½ - inch Dobsonian reflector  was built in 1981, and systematically used to view known cataloged planetary nebula that had not yet been visually detected.

In the later 1980’s, the same telescope was used in a systematic visual search for supernova. This resulted in the discovery of SN1987L in NGC 2336. In 1988 he received the ‘Nova’ award from the AAVSO  for the rare accomplishment of visually discovering a supernova.

Internet era

In 2003, Patchick discovered the first new planetary nebula to be detected by an amateur astronomer since 1894.  This became known as Pa 1, and many more were added over the ensuing years, until Pa 30 was discovered by Patchick in 2013.  By 2019, the first of many scientific papers began to appear on Pa 30. The link was established between Pa 30 and SN1181 in 2021, with interest only increasing since then on this intensely studied object.

References

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