SN 2001du : Bright type II supernova caught on the early phase

R. Evans discovered a briht supernova SN 2001du on August 24.7. It was discovered at about 14mag and reported that it was not seen on August 23.7. The position is about 90" west of the nucleus of the bright large barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1365. It superimposed on the H II region. NGC 1365 is one of the target of the key project of the Hubble Space Telescope, i.e., the measurements of the Cepheid distance. It is measured as m-M = 31.31, which is approximately same as one for the Virgo cluster. Thus, the typical SN Ia is expected to reach mag 12.5 (vsnet-campaign-sn 229, 232). IAUC 7704 informed that SN 2001du was revealed as type II caught on the early phase (vsnet-campaign-sn 237).