We know that if we have the rate of brightening over just one day along
with the color of a supernova, we can separate early nearby supernova
from equally faint but distant supernovae near max. Such screening
would allow SNIFS to concentrate on good supernovae, without wastng
time on supernovae which are too distant.

It may be possible to get this screening information using the 1 meter
telescope at McDonald observatory in west Texas. Charlie Baltay's group
at Yale has automated the telescope and has a CCD camera there. We can
use this to take images, measure the supernova brightness and color,
and compare them with the brightness one the day of discovery.

A number of things have to happen to make this work. First, the
telescope doesn't track all that well, so we have to try to model the
tracking better to allow open-loop tracking. Or, we may have to help
turn one of the CCDs into a guider (e.g., by adapting OTCOM code to
talk with the Yale CCD controller). Next, we have to have a reliable
way to photometer the supernovae on the Texas images.  This would
involve using the Palomar images as references for subtracting the
galaxy, or using other slightly less precise methods like PSF-fitting.

This is a big project. The idea is to try a first pass to see whether
a larger effort is required.