The Bright supernova web page has been around for more than 26 years now in one form or another.   The purpose of this page is to present the most up to date supernova information available.   There are 2 entry points, a framed version and an unfamed version.   There is also a special cell phone version and a machine readable version.   These pages are updated just about every day.   I also update the brightness of the brighter objects on a daily basis.   For people with slow internet, you can turn off all of the images with this link.

How to use these pages:
In the upper right corner of the main page you will find a list of the brightest supernovae sorted by brightness.   This list has the name of the supernova (which is a link) followed by the magnitude, type, and host name.   This list is automatically updated every time I update the page.

• If you click on first link (Name), you will go to the full entry; this will give you the location of the supernova, and any history of this object.  
• The second link (Host), you will go to WikiSky, which will give you a map of the area with the location of the supernova in a boxed area
• Note that a host name of "none" means that no host has been identified. These are usually galactic events which are not yet classified.

There are 2 types of entries, long and short.   The long entries follow this format:

Name of SN, Discovery reference (link if possible), Date which the supernova first appeared (Year/Month/Date format), Name of discoverers separated by a ";" (link to discovery site(s) if possible)
Name of galaxy (linked to a page describing this galaxy), RA and DEC of SN in J2000.0 coordinates (link to sky map of that area of the sky)
Directions to the SN from core of host galaxy, galaxy name (linked to a Photometry Reference image of that galaxy)
Magnitude of SN when LAST reported (link to the source of the last report) : date of report ("maximum brightness:date of maximum" or "rising" if that information is available), Type of SN if reported. [Spectrum if possible] (Any data which reference this SN (IAUCs; VSNET; past SNe))
Any special pages dedicated to observing this SN, or a link to a sub page if enough data warrants it.

If possible I will create an icon for every bright supernova. This icon will be black on a white background and mirror imaged left to right so that North is up and East is left. The exception being a color image, which will have he same orientation. All icons will be less than 100x100 pixels in size so that they load quickly.

Short entries have the following format:

• A header, noting the discovery group
• A line giving the object name (alternate names), date first observed, location (link to WikiSky), current brightness (maximum brightness if available), Type, host (if available), images (if available) and any refereces to this object on other web pages.

Subpages:

• Active Supernova Is basically a copy of the main page (sorted by magnitude) which is meant to be machine readable.   This page is harvisted automatically be several star chart software packages.
This page is automatically regenerated every time the page is updated.
• Archives gives you a list of every supernova ever discovered. The main entries are indexed in the first column.
• Bright Supernovae This is the main page, which is updated on an almost daily basis.
• Extragalactic Novae List of Novae (not supernovae) in other galaxies.  
• Links List of links to other supernova related pages (sometimes old).
• Updates List of updates made to these pages.  
• Image index List of images updated locally to the page (old, I use Flickr to do this now.)
• Photometry Reference images List of photemetry reference images
• Posting Observations perferred format used to post observations to this page.   Note that VSNET is currently down.
• Translations Links which translate the main page into various langages

Archives

Supernova are indexed by year.   These files are automatically generated every time the page is updated.   For each year's discovery you will find the following pages:
• Supernova list of Supernova discoveries for the year.
• Novae list of ExtraGalactic novae discoveries for the year.
• Updates list of updates done to the page for the year (with Errata).
• Removed objects list of objects that have been proven to not be supernova or extragalactic novae.
• Sorted by Location (RA) List of the year's discoveries sorted by Right Assention (East to West)
• Sorted by Location (Decl) List of the year's discoveries sorted by Declination (North to South)
• Sorted by Date List of the year's discoveries sorted by first observed date.
• Sorted by Brightness List of the year's discoveries sorted by Magnitued.
• Sorted by Red Shift List of the year's discoveries sorted by "Z", or distance from Earth.   host with out a red shift are at the bottom.
• Sorted by Host name List of the year's discoveries sorted by the name of the host galaxy, anonymous host are at the bottom.
• Sorted by Name List of the year's discoveries sorted by the name of the object.   This list also includes the "Removed objects" which are not included in the other list.
• Statistics Counts up the objects discovered for the year in various catagories.

Other list found in the archives
• List of active supernova machine readable version of the main page, automatically updated
• Galaxies with two or more supernovae automatically updated
• Galaxies with two or more supernovae at the same time Manually updated
• LBV list List of LBVs, LRNs, and FBOTs (not quite a supernova, but close) automatically updated
• GRB list List of know GRB afterglows

Programs:

• cpupd - Copies the updates from the main page and put them on the updates page
• maketnssort.sh - Reads the latest discoveries from TNS and puts them in the correct format for the main page.
• addma - Takes the output of "maketnssort.sh" and adds it to the main page.
• snloc - Reads in the main page and creates all of the list in the archives.
• findfiles - Finds all of the files that have been added to the pages since the last time the page was uploaded.   Creates an FTP "putfile" and uploads to main site, and mirror sites.
• findhost.sh - Finds the likely host name of a supernova by doing a NED search.
• caloffset.sh - Calculates the offset between the supernova and host galaxy in arch seconds.