Robert Evans (astronomer)

Robert Owen Evans (born 20 February 1937) is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and an amateur astronomer who holds the record for visual discoveries of supernovae (42).

Evans was born in Sydney, Australia. He graduated from the University of Sydney, majoring in philosophy and modern history. Coming from a religious family, Evans trained to become a Methodist minister and was ordained by the New South Wales Conference in 1967. He served as a circuit minister until his retirement in 1998. He is the author of a number of books on the history of evangelism.

Evans took up supernova hunting around 1955, but his first adequate instrument was a 10-inch (25 cm) Newtonian telescope he had assembled only about 1968. He made his first official supernova discovery in 1981 and found nine more before using larger telescopes. While living in Coonabarabran, New South Wales he used his own 16 inch (40 cm) telescope. From early 1995 to mid-1997 he also had limited access to the Siding Spring 40-inch (1.0 m) Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory (he was allocated about 110 nights, half of which were suitable for observing), resulting in about 10,000 galaxy observations, another three visual supernovae discoveries, and an additional four supernovae spotted on photographs made at the observatory.

By 2001, he had made 33 visual discoveries and by the end of 2005, despite the increasing competition from automated telescopes, the total number had already increased to 40 visual supernova discoveries plus one comet. In 2005, Evans relied almost exclusively on his 31 cm Dobsonian. He reported 6,814 galaxy observations in a period of 107 hours and 30 minutes, spread out over 77 nights. During that time, he found four supernovae; three had already been discovered by others, the fourth was SN 2005df, which was Evan's third supernova discovery in NGC 1559 (after SN 1984J and SN 1986L) and his 40th visual discovery.

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