Ideally, a supernova search would combine the widest-field camera with the latest CCD technology, but that option wasn’t available to the collaboration. Instead they had to choose between a telescope that couldn’t accommodate a CCD camera but had a wide-field view and a telescope that could accommodate a CCD but had a narrow-field view. They chose the wide-field, no-CCD view, the 24-inch Curtis Schmidt Telescope on Cerro Tololo. When hunting prey as rare and elusive as supernovae, the more galaxies you can grab at a time, the better your chances of finding even one, and in identifying
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