Doug Rich (born 1948, in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American amateur astronomer,

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...

discoverer, and team leader for th
Eagle Hill Supernova Search Project
He is also a former ZYGO optician and telescope maker and now lives in Hampden, Maine, USA. In 1999 he establishe
Rich Observatory
and has since discovered 26 extragalactic

supernovae A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a ...

. Rich has received attention for his work with discovering supernovae. He wrote an article in Astronomy Magazine on the topic and was later featured in Sky and Telescope magazine, which identified him as one of four leading amateurs in the field of discovering supernovae. Rich has had three notable

discoveries
SN 2005ay
was a relatively nearby type II-P (plateau) supernova caught soon after explosion. Extensive observations o
SN 2005ay
in galaxy

NGC 3938 NGC 3938 is an unbarred spiral galaxy in the Ursa Major constellation. It was discovered on 6 February 1788 by William Herschel. It is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the Ursa Major South galaxy group and is roughly 67,000 light years in ...

, with th
GALEX
Space Telescope and numerous land-based telescopes, helped astronomers confirm the theory tha
type II-P
supernovae can be used as "

standard candles The cosmic distance ladder (also known as the extragalactic distance scale) is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A ''direct'' distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible o ...

" - a way to measure distances to distant galaxies.
SN2010X
was an uncommon merger of two white dwarf stars in galaxy NGC 1573A. This rare type of supernova which has spectral characteristics similar to a type Ia, is dubbed
.Ia (point one a)
because it is one-tenth as luminous as a normal type

Ia supernova A Type Ia supernova (read: "type one-A") is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white ...

and also fades in about one-tenth the time. Another unique discovery
SN2010al
was a rare explosion of a Wolf-Rayet Star in galaxy UGC 4286. This find, also discovered at an early stage, was influential in establishing a new supernova sub-classification
the type Ibn

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rich, Doug Living people 1948 births People from Hartford, Connecticut Amateur astronomers