One day in 1987, an astronomer by the name of Ian Shelton was making
observations of the Tarantula Nebula in Large Magellanic cloud at
Las Campanas Observatory, and he
noticed something strange on his image. After seeing this, he did something
that astronomers have't done for some time, he went outside and looked up.
SN 1987A got as bright as 2.7, the only other recent SN even to come close
was 1885A in M31 which got up to mag 6.
What follows is the list of IAUCs which announced this SN, and what
they discovered:
IAUC 4321 2/27/87 More Spectra, STSci report on the
companion to Sanduleak -69 202, mag 4.3
IAUC 4322 2/28/87, First IAUC to be published
on a weekend. Sanduleak -69 202's companions was seperated by 1".4
(just over an arc second) from it'sparent. Mag 4.4
