Amateur Astronomers Help Discover Cosmic Crash

More contributions from amateurs helped determine the nature of the star. Amateur spectroscopist Hamish Barker tried to capture a spectrum of Asassn-21qj in late July, 2022. A spectrum spreads out the colors of the starlight, revealing the star’s temperature. However, the star turned out to be too dim, so Hamish asked Olivier Garde from a French amateur astronomy team if they could add ASASSN-21q to their target list. The team, called the Southern Spectroscopic project Observatory Team (or “2SPOT”), succeeded in collecting the needed spectrum in early September, 2022 and forwarded it Kenworthy.  The 2SPOT team members are Stéphane Charbonnel, Pascal Le Dû, Olivier Garde, Lionel Mulato and Thomas Petit.