2012CBET.3167....1B

Greg Bock, Windaroo, Queensland, Australia, reports the discovery of an apparent supernova (mag 15.3) by Stuart Parker (Oxford, Canterbury, New Zealand) on a 30-s unfiltered CCD image taken by Parker with a 35-cm Celestron C14 reflector (+ ST10 camera) on July 1.66 UT. Bock measures the position of the new object to be R.A. = 23:14:47.98, Decl. = -43:36:22.3 (equinox 2000.0; reference stars from USNO-B and UCAC3 catalogues), which was noted to be 5' [sic] west and 23' [sic] south of the nucleus of the galaxy NGC 7531 (Bock surely meant the offset numbers to be in arcsec instead of arcmin). Nothing is visible at this position on an image taken by Stuart on June 26 (limiting red mag > 18.0) or on Digitized Sky Survey red and infrared images (limiting red mag > 19). The variable was designated PSN J23144798-4336223 when it was posted at the Central Bureau's TOCP webpage and is here designated SN 2012dj based on the spectroscopic confirmation reported below. A. Klotz reports magnitude R = 14.5 ± 0.1 on July 7.33 from an image obtained with the TAROT telescope at La Sille, Chile.