Friday, November 10, 2017

Update on Supernova SN2014J

In 2014 I imaged my first supernova in another galaxy. It is the bright star the arrow is pointing to.



Here is my blog on that occasion: https://lapineobservatory.blogspot.com/2014/01/captured-my-first-supernova-tonight.html

The initial explosion was a supernova called SN 2014J, discovered on Jan. 21, 2014, in the nearby galaxy M82, located 11.4 million light-years away from Earth.

Here is a before/after image of it taken by an astronomer at University of London Observatory named Dr. Stephen J. Fossey (here's a report about it)



The Hubble Space Telescope now has also imaged that exploding star over a period of 2 years after its initial blast. The result is that you can see the shock wave of that explosion in the area around that supernova as it expands into the stellar dust and light of that galaxy.

Here is Space.com's report about it: https://www.space.com/38731-exploding-star-echo-of-light-hubble-telescope.html

This is the repeating image sequence that the Hubble captured. You can see a ring shockwave that distorts the region around it!




Monday, November 6, 2017

A break in the clouds and Andromeda Galaxy in Black and White

The skies cleared just long enough tonight to put in some imaging time before the Moon rose above the horizon. Outside temp: 20 degrees.
I captured the Andromeda Galaxy with the Daystar telescope (from the CATE Solar Experiment) and a Canon 40D camera.
This is the result of stacking 140+ images (ranging from 10 to 15 sec each) with DeepSkyStacker and then post processed using Luminar photo editing program. Total time: 30 minutes of exposure.
Click on image for a bigger image