2008CBET.1338....1B

N. Bennert, University of California, Riverside; and T. N. Steele, R. Chornock, W. Li, and A. V. Filippenko, University of California, Berkeley, report that inspection of CCD spectra (range 330-1050 nm), obtained on Apr. 14.19 UT with the Kast spectrograph on the Shane 3-m telescope at Lick Observatory, reveals that 2008bs (CBET 1333) is a supernova of type Ib, probably within a week or two after maximum brightness. P-Cyg spectral features due to the 587.6-, 667.8-, and 706.5-nm lines of He I are present with absorption minima blueshifted by about 8500 km/s, after removal of a host-galaxy redshift of 7290 km/s (measured from narrow emission lines in the spectrum). A prominent, narrow absorption line due to Na I D at the redshift of the host galaxy has an apparent equivalent width in excess of 0.3 nm in these noisy low-resolution data, indicating that the object is likely to be highly reddened.