Supernova 2014J in M82 - Super Stuff!

Well its Supernova Week! There's science going off everwhere! Why watch endless hours of Sci-fi when you can watch stars blowing up live!

After last week's excitement of a nice Type IIn supernova in NGC 3448, there is breaking news tonight with a bright Supernova going off in M82.

Image Credit: P.Lake H06 0.5m f/4.5 Planewave +CCD

UPDATE 3: Clint Whittaker iTelescope member photographed SN 2014J on the 15th of Jan at 16:40 UT.

Image Credit: C. Whittaker

UPDATE 2: A careful review of some of the iTelescope.net's member images of M82 show the brightening commenced sometime between 13th and 15th of January. The earliest image of this event now stands at 2014 01 15.571 by K Itagaki from an earlier survey. I have added a link to the discovery circumstances (below) - What a story that is, they'll be dining out on that for years.

UPDATE 1: It looks like Fraser Cain's Virtual Star Party photographed the SuperNova back on Sunday night US time, not realising it at the time. Tom Nathe broadcast a live photo of M82 into the Virtual Star Party with the Supernova clearly in view, but operating under the pressure of a live broadcast, didn't realise it at the time.

As usual the iTelescope.net community has been involved in prompt follow up action with the on-demand telescopes swinging into action.

So what's going on, how does all this happen, what are the reporting processes involved and how do Amateur Astronomer's make a contribution. All good questions!

Stars blowing up are more common that you think. Whilst the mainstream media usually only pick up on a couple of Supernovae per year (usually the bright ones in well known galaxies), astronomers detect over 400 novae each year, which is more than one per day. Amateur astronomers make a significant number of these discoveries, and several teams have developed advanced techniques, processes and teamwork to systematiclly go after these interesting events.

One great leader in this area of the amateur community is the BOSS team (Backyard Observatory Supernova Search) who have discovered 83 supernovae, one of which has rocked the astronomy community and resulted in the Hubble Space Telescope being swung into action for follow up measurements. Other regulars are a dedicated group of Japanese astronomers who hardly miss a trick: Koichi Itagaki, Meineko Sakura, Seiichiro Kiota (and their teams - appologies for not mentioning everyone), do great work. On the 14th January Mr Itagaki discovered a Supernova in NGC 3448. Well known amateur astronomer Patrick Wiggins also photographed it independently, quite by chance, without a targeted search. I assisted Patrick with his follow-up images, and Patrick later found Mr Itagaki was awarded the discovery as he had an earlier image from the night before.

Image Credit: P.Lake H06 0.5m f/4.5 Planewave +CCD

Many of these dedicated teams have advanced scripting techniques with systematic searches that can cover up to 200 galaxies per night. The 6 members of the BOSS team also leverage the time zones from New Zealand, to the east coast of Australia, and across to the west coast of Australia. Each part of the team performs different steps, photographing, processing, researching, following up and reporting. They have built strong partnerships with professional observatories who provide the spectral analysis, to quickly identify the supernova type. The BOSS team pride themselves on having never having submitted a false-positive report.

Using a sophisticated DSLR camera on a tripod and subtracting images from night to night, comparing the differences, is another method used by amateur astronomers. This is surprisingly effective method for transient nova in the southern hemisphere.

Tonight's discovery of the supernova in M82 was reported to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams [CBAT] by S.J Fossey and his class of students it was confirmed by Seiichiro Kiota and followed up by the MASTER Team in Russia, and Leonid Elenin from the ISON Team. The MASTER team are also great leaders and made 210 transient (includes supernova, nova) discoveries in 2013.

So if I am photographing a galaxy and think I can see something different, what should I do, how do I check, who do I tell, if I think I might have found a Supernova/Nova event?

Step 1 - Re-photograph the area and check for asteroids and or artifacts in your image

Step 2 - Check a previous known image of the same area and compare to make sure nothing was there previously. You need to be careful doing this as other images may have a different orientation to your's depending on the Position Angle of the camera they were taken with. It may be flipped horizonally and vertically to your image. One such site where you can get easy access historical images is the CDS (Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg) Portal which has a searchable web interface for various star Catalogs (just enter the exact RA and Dec).

Step 3 - Once you believe you have something - alert some of your collegues and get them to obtain some confirmation images.

Step 4 - Report to CBAT with the exact postion to the nearest arc-second with an estimate of the magnitude and your location, telescope details, and discovery circumstances (eg PSN J09554214+6940260 where "Possible Super Nova" is RA is 09 55 42.14 and Dec +69 40 26.0).

Step 5 - Wait and hope you are the first in - but you'll have to be quick ;-) Its always a great idea to get someone to check your work so you avoid embarrassing mistakes.

Step 6 - Then sit back and wait for other astronomers with spectroscopic capabilities to confirm the Supernova type by assessing which Balmer Lines are present in the spectrum.

Even though you might not hear about every supernova, this is a vibrant area of constant research that creates great excitment through the thrill of the chase for amateur astronomers and professionals around the world.

Black Eye in the Sky!

Today's image in my Southern Summer/ Northern Winter image series highlighting some of the seasonal delights for astronomers is M64, commonly known as the "Black Eye" Galaxy.

Its a deep sky object, as its quite small in size but quite bright none the less. The so called "Black Eye" is caused by thick dust lanes of the spiral galaxy blocking some of the central star light. The darker thick dust lanes being on the closer side from our perspective.

It often reminds me of looking over a thick eye-wall of a hurricane.

The M64 is its number in the Messier Catalogue, a list of "fuzzy objects" compiled by Charles Messier in the 1700's that were known to be not comets.

So over the course of January, I'll be posting daily images some of these highlights of the night sky. Today's image was taken last night from New Mexico H06 on 0.5m Planewave, a 300 sec exposure with the Luminance filter.

Enjoy!

Rosette Rising

I promised myself I would try and produce a little more content this year. It was a long time between posts towards the back end of 2013 as I was very busy. So I thought I might run a little short series of some of the Northern Winter/Southern Summer highlights.

The Rosette Nebula otherwise known as NGC 2244 is "in season" again. A nice little low res jpg preview file. I really must get around to running an image series on it. Its quite spectacular with the open cluster and only about 1/4 of the Nebula actually fits in the field of view at this focal length. So it would be a great one for me to finally learn how to do a mosaic compilation.

Taken from T11 at iTelescope.net this is the one-shot jpg that new members can access from their free getting started trial account.

T11 has a focal length of 2280 mm and a deep sky field of view 36x54 arc mins, with the 0.66 focal reducer it produces f/4.5.

Enjoy!

Comet Siding Spring C/2013 A1 Update

Image Credit: P.Lake Q62 T31 0.5m Planewave + CCD F/4.4 120 Secs Luminance 6th Jan 2014

Happy New Year - to all the readers of the AARTScope Blog!

Lets hope its going to be a great new year. Its all ready off to a great start astronomicly speaking, with a small 1-3 meter asteroid that obtained the very first preliminary designation of 2014 AA breaking up in the atmosphere before Astronomers had even finalised the calculation that it was going to hit us. Fortunately on this occasion it was a very small size causing a bright fireball just off the coast of West Africa which, so far, no-one has reported seeing. It was however picked up on some of the powerful infrasound detectors used to watch out for Nuclear Test Ban Treaty violations.

Given the very small size of this asteroid, something that small hits us every 1-6 months, so its not an unusual event, but very unusual to photograph an inbound bolide like that before it hits. 2008 TC3 was the only other asteroid to be photographed before it hit the earth, in October 2008.

Given its designation of 2014 AA, I thought I check up on that other "A Grade" designation for C/2013 A1 Siding Spring, which was the first comet discovered in 2013. It is being watched carefully due to its close approach to Mars in October 2014. My previous effort back in Nov 2013 is here.

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is now sporting a nice 105 arcsec tail with hints of a nice jet developing, it is currently around Mag 14-15.

Image Credit: P.Lake Q62 T31 0.5m Planewave + CCD F/4.4 120 Secs Luminance 6th Jan 2014

The passage of Comet Siding Spring will be watched with great interest and will undoubtably be one of the highlights of 2014 as it passes close to Mars just after the arrival of the NASA's MAVEN Probe, and of course India's first orbital mission MOM will be close by as well.

Clear skies & and happy new year once again!

THANKS as ISON keeps GIVING!

UPDATE: 10:00 UT

It is clear that a part (reduced or fragment) of the nucleus of Comet ISON made it round the sun and is now moving away from the sun. After initally brightening and reforming a dust tail derived from its momentum as it swung around the sun, it seems to be fading now as it moves towards the outer FOV of the Lasco C3 camera of the SOHO observatory. The tail is gradually swinging around to the outbound direction. It will be interesting to see what the mission scientists can gleen from this from the multitude of data sets.

For now my rule of thumb, is really not very sciency, but if a naked eye comet reaches the Lasco C3 FOV - its going round! Not a lot of math in that, but its two from two in 3 years! Seriously though for the real science - read NASA's Comet ISON observing campaign blog which is being regularly updated by respected comet supremo Karl Battams.

UPDATE: 05:30 UT

ISON continues to brighten and a new dust tail appears to be swinging around from its transit path towards its outbound trajectory.

Image Credit: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - Lasco C3 23:30 UT 28/11/2013

What we know about comets is alot more than we used to know, but not everything there is to know!

Like most people with a passing interest in astronomy I have been following the passage of Comet ISON as it approached perihelion. I have followed the intense debates about what might constitute a "secular light curve" and observed daily predictions and alerts about what was about to happen.

Today it has been hilarious to see people pronounce ISON dead on arrival at perihelion and wander off to their thanksgiving dinner thinking its all over red rover!

Currently twitter is ablaze with witty retorts and updates as some sort of remenant has re-emerged and continues to brighten. Most of the wise observers are doing the appropriate thing and "waiting for more information". So far on twitter it has been re-named Schrodinger's Comet, Schwartzneger's "I'll be back" comet.

Image Credit: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - Lasco C2

As for me, I am reminded of Comet Lovejoy (2011) which surprised everyone and made it past perihelion and broke up outbound after a spectacular display at Christmas 2011. I couldn't help remembering that the tail didn't really return immediately after perhelion, until the Comet moved away from the immediate vicintiy of the Sun. In fact in 2011 Lovejoy's tail didn't really reform until it was even further out than it is now.

One thing to consider here is that the perspective from which we view these images is only two dimentional, ie whats in the image, and its very hard to tell from that perspective what at the front or behind.

Image credit: Comet Lovejoy (2011) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - Lasco C3

Whilst comets are not made of sugar, think of creme brulee, the sugar gets heated up, some smoke comes off, it suffers intense heat, changes its composition and comes out the otherside a crunchy piece of toffee with roughly its same mass but slightly different texture. Now this is a bit of a stretch scientifically as I said, as comets are not made of sugar, but with the heat, the increase in speed, the change of direction, the resultant slowing and cooling after perihelion, there is alot going on there that we really just don't know enough about.

Which is why comets are, always have been, and always will be, incredibly undpredicatable.

Comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy)

Comet Lovejoy is determined not to be outdone by Comet ISON. However, reports circulating through social media this morning that Comet ISON has now reached magnitude 4, will make sure it has more work to do - as if comets had opinions anyway.

Comet Lovejoy continues to brighten and its ion and dust tails continue to grow. It's coma is a massive 3.7 arcmins now in a 180sec image, which is probably closer to 2 arcmins in reality as the movement probably overstates it a little. It is very hard to make a magnitude estimate now from CCD images. Magnitude estimates are now best made by binocular observations and comparing the brightness with the known brightness of nearby stars. Comet ISON is now a naked eye object. Lovejoy, I suspect is not far away either.

The encroaching moonlight was not very kind to last night's attempt to capture a nice shot. Early this week Rolando Lingusti took a brilliant shot of Comet Lovejoy that was featured in Tony Flander's article in Sky and Telescope.

Comet Lovejoy was discovered by Australia's talented and "best practice" comet hunter Terry Lovejoy, who was a speaker at this year's Advanced Astro Imaging Conference on the Gold Coast. As a keynote speaker he outlined his search methods, which were, I have to say very comprehensive and methodical. Catching two brilliant Christmas Comets in three years is not a fluke, its through sheer hardwork and relentless persuit of what the Oort Cloud throws up each year.

Image Credit: P.Lake 3 x 180sec R,G,B T11 iTelescope.net

I found it a bit easier to observe the details in the tail in the individual subframes Luminance channel, which I didn't use in the R,G,B image as I ws getting too much light to manage with the intruding moonlight.

Image Credit: P.Lake 180 sec Luminance T11 iTelescope.net

I refered to Comet Lovejoy as the "one wood" comet (golf club) earlier this week in reference to its slightly out of shape coma. This can be mainly attributable to the fast speed of the Comet travelling at 9 arcsecs per minute in a direction of about 35 degrees across the line of its tail. Its pretty hard to pull up that speed at 0.81 arsces per pixel

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) November Update!

Comet Siding Spring continues on its merry way.

Currently overshadowed a little by the 2012 comets, ISON, Lovejoy, Linear 2012 X1 and Enke all feature this month in the northern skies. Siding Spring will have to wait till next year for its fanfare as it does a very close approach to Mars just after the MAVEN space mission arrives to sample Mars atmosphere.

None the less - Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is again high in the southern skies after midnight. These images are stacked in groups of 6 for the movement of the Comet to get a nice tight coma for astrometry.

All the iTelescope.net scopes haev been very busy chasing the morning comets so I thought tonight after I collected my 2013 TV135 data for MPC, I'd jump onto T31 at Siding Spring and chase it's namesake comet.

ENJOY!!!!