Photometry of Type II Supernova SN 2023ixf with a Worldwide Citizen Science Network

TL;DR

This paper reports highly detailed photometric observations of the Type II supernova SN 2023ixf in M101, collected through a global citizen science network, revealing its early brightness rise and decay.

Contribution

It demonstrates the successful use of a worldwide citizen science network to obtain high-cadence supernova photometry starting before detection.

Findings

SN 2023ixf reached a peak magnitude of -18.18 in V-band.

Data captured the shock emergence and subsequent decay.

Global citizen scientists contributed 252 observations from 115 telescopes.

Abstract

We present highly sampled photometry of the supernova (SN) 2023ixf, a Type II SN in M101, beginning 2 days before its first known detection. To gather these data, we enlisted the global Unistellar Network of citizen scientists. These 252 observations from 115 telescopes show the SN's rising brightness associated with shock emergence followed by gradual decay. We measure a peak $M_{V}$ = -18.18 $\pm$ 0.09 mag at 2023-05-25 21:37 UTC in agreement with previously published analyses.