The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, first discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, and communicated to Charles Messier who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.
See Wikipedia for full description of the Pinwheel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_GalaxySN 2023ixf is a type II (core collapse) supernova located in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101). It was first observed on 19 May 2023 by Koichi Itagaki and immediately classified as a type II supernova.
Initial magnitude at discovery was 14.9. After discovery, the Zwicky Transient Facility project found a precovery image of the supernova at magnitude 15.87 two days before discovery. By 22 May 2023 SN 2023ixf had brightened to about magnitude 11. It could be seen in telescopes as small as 114 mm (4.5 in) and should remain visually visible with backyard telescopes for a few months.
The supernova is about 21 million light-years from Earth and is expected to have left behind either a neutron star or black hole based on current stellar evolution models.
The supernova is located near a prominent HII region, NGC 5461, in an outer spiral arm of the bright galaxy.
The last supernova this close to Earth was SN2014J in Messier 82, roughly 12 million light-years from Earth.The supernova started to fade on around 10 June 2023. [Source: Wikipedia].
Capture Information:
The image was captured with the iOptron CEM120 mount, the venerable Meade 12"LX200 SCT OTA, and my QHYCCD QHY294m Pro mono CMOS camera at F7.16 (2182mm FL).
Astronomik's Ha narrow band, and Luminance, Red, Green and Blue broad band filters were used.
Image Information -- 2023
LUM : 67 subs (5.58hr) on May 30th and Jun 15th, and 18th.
RED : 25 subs (2.08hr) on May 31st and Jun 10th.
GRN : 26 subs (2.17hr) on Jun 10th,15th and 24th.
BLU : 24 subs (2.00hr) on Jun 15th and 24th.
Ha : 25 subs (2.08hr) on May 30th.
All exposures were at 5 minutes (300s) each, 1600 gain, 56 offset, 1x1 bin and -10C.
Processing was done with PixInsight, following (for the most part) Kayronjm's tutorial of Feb. 24th from several years back.
Luminance was generated using only subs from the LUM filter. R, G and B were collected for the color mix.
I used the technique presented on Harry's Astroshed site for adding the Halpha (Ha) images to the red images. You can see in the finished product where the isolated Hydrogen Alpha features are prominent in red.
Annotation showing the super nova location done with PixInsight process was created by Mike Cranfield.
North is to the right (pretty sure), and this is a medium crop due to the FOV’s “width” being slightly greater than the filter’s reach.
Comments:
While the plan is to create all subs at -10C, I'm finding that the summer heat is only allowing the temp to reach around -5C.
This is the 3rd time I’ve run at this target.
The first was in May of 2011 with my Meade 12”LX200 fork mount, using the Canon XSi Mod DSLR.
The second was in March of 2015 with my Meade 12”LX200 fork mount, using the Atik 383L+mono CCD camera.
This time we’re on the iOptron CEM120 mount, using the QHY294 pro mono cmos camera.
I can’t say this effort came out better than the one at 2015. However this one has the super nova.
ONE LAST THING:
Nothing new from iOptron regarding the mount’s unacceptable RA excursion issue.
And the tracking seems to have deteriorated further lately. So much so that I had to trash several subs and debated with myself whether or not to post the image.
I’m seriously considering going back into the mount and investigating if the RA stepper motor might have a loose drive sprocket.
Comments