If Las Vegas made book on which amateur astronomer would be the first to spot the next supernova, the odds-on favorite would have to be Robert Evans, 50, a Uniting Church minister from New South Wales, Australia. True, the skies were cloudy overhead on Feb. 23, and Evans missed the chance to be acclaimed the discoverer of spectacular 1987A. But four days later he was the first to sight the much dimmer, more distant 1987B, the year's second supernova. According to Brian Marsden of the International Astronomical Union, that was only the 18th visual discovery of a supernova by an amateur...
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