Friday, May 29, 2020

Supernova in M61

Earlier this month I spent some time installing my Off Axis Guider (OAG) on the Edge11.  With new spacers I was able to get the OAG to work pretty good.  I was still having issues with the FOV and sensitivity of my guide camera though and so finding a star and guiding was still problematic.  I since purchased a new guide camera based on reviews and comments of the folks on the forums I frequent - the ZWO ASI174mm. This camera has solved my OAG problems of getting decent stars to guide on.  Alas, the clouds rolled in and I have not been able to image anything with the new OAG setup.

But, back on May 13 when setting the spacers I was able to capture M61, a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. I was using this field of view as my test view for getting the focus on the OAG worked out.  Although I did process the image later that night, the focus was still a bit off due to terrible atmosphere conditions, but I still wanted to get the RGB stack processed to show the supernova (SN 2020 jfo) that appeared in the galaxy.

Here is the image showing the galaxy (cropped up close) with the supernova marked. The power output of an exploding star is immense. This star (or what's left of it) is almost brighter than the entire core of the galaxy!  The other three bright stars are foreground stars in our galaxy between earth and M61.

M61 with SN 2020 jfo
Edge11 and ASI1600mm RGB 20x60sec each

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