This image contains three interesting targets. The first two are the larger galaxies in the foreground, NGC 1055 (lower left), and NGC 1068 or Messier 77 (upper right). The third is a little harder to spot. Zoom in on the galaxy in the upper right. If you are familiar with M77, there is what appears to be a little star where no star was before. It’s near the core, at the six o’clock position. That new star like object is Supernova SN 2018ivc. If you are having difficulty spotting it, I constructed an animated gif that highlights the event. Click on the image to zoom in. https://www.astrobin.com/379580/?nc=user and you will see it blinking in the animation.

The top right galaxy has two names, Messier 77 or NGC 1068. It’s a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus, about 47 million light years away. Messier 77 has an estimated diameter of 170,000 light years and is one of the biggest galaxies of the Messier Catalogue. The apparent size when viewed from our vantage point is 7.1 X 6.0 arc min with an apparent magnitude of 9.6

The galaxy in the lower left is NGC 1055. This is an edge-on spiral galaxy located in the same constellation, Cetus. It has a prominent bulge crossed by a wide knotty dark dust lane. If you look carefully, several bright Ha areas can be easily seen. NGC 155 is 52 million light years away, and has a diameter of about 115,800 light years across. The apparent size is 7.6 X 2.7 arc min with an apparent magnitude of 11.4. It’s a fairly dramatic look galaxy, and the glow around it is just amazing. I really like the look of this galaxy.

Messier 77 and NGC 1044 are a binary system. Because of this, I really wanted to include both objects in the same frame. Normally, I would image each separately.

The third object is the Supernova SN 2018ivc. The event happened midway during the imaging of this photo. At first, I thought it was my eyes or a guiding error. As I got more data, yep, something had changed. Once I realised this, I then heard about it. It only took 47 million years to get to us. What’s a few days to realize what you are looking at? If you’re interested in further information about the Supernova, there is a web page. http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2018/sn2018ivc.html

Exposure Details:

Lum 35X900

Red 26X450

Green 16X450

Blue 16X450

Ha 17X1800

Total time 24.5 hours



Instruments Used:

10 Inch RCOS fl 9.1

Astro Physics AP-900 Mount

SBIG STL 11000m

FLI Filter Wheel

Astrodon Lum, Red, Green, Blue Filters

Baader Planetarium H-alpha 7nm Narrowband-Filter



Software Used

CCDStack (calibration, alignment, data rejection, stacking)

Photoshop CS 6 (Image processing)

Thanks for looking