From s.a.a.:
At 15:12 today, a possible Supernova was found by a member of theI.S.N (International Supernova Network) search group (a friend of mine). If confirmed, this will be the most beautiful event to watch for the forthcoming months.Located at RA 2.57, dec 17:43 N, and currently at magnitude -4 (still brightening!) it will be clearly visible in the western horizon as the Sun goes down.
I SAW IT!!
As others have mentioned, the position given above is very close to Venus. I set up my telescope with 20mm finding eyepiece, and set on Venus. This ocular has little eye relief, so I removed my eyeglasses. Seeing was only so-so near the horizon, and I realized that I'd erred in not attempting an observation well before sunset.
At first I saw only the bright disk of Venus, despite various techniques to improve performance. Jay's suggestions at last month's club meeting came to mind. They were intended for faint objects, so I reversed them. I tried staring directly, un-adapting my eye by first looking into my flashlight, holding my breath, etc. No good.
For a moment I thought of Jay's neutrino telescope, but quickly realized that the neutrinos are released in a burst at the initial collapse, so they were long gone by now.
I put back my trifocals and carefully searched by direct vision. Still nothing. Back at the telescope, I refocused (still wearing the glasses) and tried again. This time, with astigmatism corrected, I found that, by holding my head just so, I had a double object! The S/N is very near Venus, well under an arc-minute, in a nearly north/south direction. Most remarkably, the S/N showed a disc only slightly smaller than Venus (I focussed on the S/N), though this may have been due to the very unstable air, now nearly on the horizon. I can only speculate that I may have been seeing the material that was ejected from the S/N.