Supernova in Galaxy NGC 3941

On early Saturday morning I was experimenting with my new camera and decided to image a new supernova in galaxy NGC 3941.  This type Ia supernova was discovered on 2/3/2018 by Masaki Tsuboi and is located 4".1 east and 0".8 north of the center of NGC 3941.  At the time of discovery it was Mag 13.0; I estimated mag 14 when I captured it.

SN 2018pv in NGC 3941
EdgeHD11 f/7 - ASI1600mm Luminance only (40x10sec)
February 17, 2018

To give you an idea of how bright supernovae get, consider that NGC 3941 is a barred lenticular galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major at a distance of 40 million light years from Earth. The supernova is almost outshining the center halo of the galaxy - one star - almost brighter than the whole collection of millions of stars in the galaxy!  If a star in our own galaxy were to go supernova it would outshine all other objects in the sky except the sun and would be visible in broad daylight. This actually happened back in 1054 AD.

The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus. The now-current name is due to William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1840 using a 36-inch telescope and produced a drawing that looked somewhat like a crab. Corresponding to a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054, the nebula was observed later by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified with a historical supernova explosion (wikipedia).

The blue marble

Not the usual post from me but this is just great. Enjoy!!

Falcon Heavy Success!!!

Falcon Heavy Launch - Feb 6, 2018

Congrats to SpaceX for a fantastic test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket.  What an unbelievable launch. A dream that has eluded NASA was achieved yet again by SpaceX - the launch and landing of reusable rocket boosters. This time, two of them, side by side, simultaneously!

And the stage-2 rocket is sending one of Elon Musk's Tesla Roadsters on a course toward Mars. Yep, you read that right - Mars. He revealed surreal live video feeds of the car cruising around the planet, complete with a “Don’t Panic” dashboard message, a dummy astronaut in the driver’s seat, and David Bowie on the radio.

The only down-side to a picture perfect launch was the unsuccessful landing of the middle core of SpaceX’s huge rocket which missed the drone ship where it was supposed to land. The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour. Two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch (as reported by The Verge).

Visit YouTube for the video coverage of the launch.

New Astrocamera on the bench in test

ZWO ASI1600mm Pro Camera with
EFW 8-position Filter Wheel

It's been about 2 years since I purchased my QHY10 OSC (One Shot Color) camera and I've taken a number of nice astrophotos with it, both at the prime focus of my EdgeHD as well as on the Hyperstar wide field lens. But the "real-deal" in astrophotography is though the use of mono (black and white) cameras. In the OSC case, the image is taken in color, much like a normal digital camera. In this scenario, the light must pass a filter in the camera known as a Bayer Matrix, which consists of alternating red, green (2x as many as red and blue) and blue filter elements. A given sensor therefore contains 25% red sensitive pixels, 50% green pixels and 25% blue. So the light from a object in space is split into these groupings. What this means is that a predominately red object is only captured by 25% of the pixels on the sensor (and lots of deep space objects tend to be in the red end of the spectrum). Much of the sensor is wasted and the sensitivity is greatly reduced.

A mono camera captures all the light all the time. That means it is much more sensitive and captures a lot more data in any given exposure. But if its mono, how do you get a color photo?

Astrophotographers use a set of colored filters to achieve a final image. Four separate exposures are necessary to create a single color photo - one through a red filter, one through a green, one through a blue and finally one through a clear, or luminance, filter. These are then combined later in software post processing to produce a color image. So the time on the telescope is quadrupled when imaging with a mono camera, but the results are of greater quality and capture much more detail in the dim regions of an object.

So I've been spending some time testing and getting the software set up to handle the new camera while the skies are cloudy. The photo shows the ASI1600mm Pro being tested with it's filter wheel attached. Much to do as I hope to test it out on real space objects in the coming days.

Follow the bouncing "Universe"!

 

An interesting theory now proposes that the universe didn't come from a colossal explosion (the Big Bang) but rather as the result of a cosmic bounce - a collapsing universe reaches a point where it bounces back and starts expanding again.

The theory is rather interesting, and doesn't need the controversial 'inflation' part of the popular Big Bang theory.

Read more at:  Quanta Magazine