M61 with some bling! (Andrew Lockwood)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 61 · NGC 4292 · NGC 4301 · NGC 4303

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M61 with some bling!

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M61 with some bling!

Here's a part of the universe having a really bad day. The large spiral galaxy in the middle is M61, one of the many members of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, about 52 million light years away. Like our own galaxy it is composed of billions and billions of stars, but because of the distance we can't even begin to see individual stars in that galaxy, except for one. This one star has rather spectacularly lost its lunch in a type II supernova. These happen when the core of a star can no longer support the mass of the gas by the heat of fusion, so the whole lot collapses under it's own weight. Then this gravity-powered collapse runs into a whole new set of physics when it all crunches together, causing a massive explosion that is brighter than the light of the 10 billion stars in the galaxy combined. It's visible here as the blue star at about 2 o'clock, halfway along the radius of the galaxy.

This particular supernova shall forever be referred to as 2020jfo, and in a month's time it will largely have faded and not be visible to us. But within about 25 light years of it the radiation would be strong enough to destroy 1/2 of the earth's ozone layer. Closer than a few light years - catastrophic destruction of planets.

This is about 60 minutes worth of images through my 16" as part of a longer series to try and capture this in colour.

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Description: reprocessed to flatten the background a bit.

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Suburban Astrophotography

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	3524660
PixInsight job	n/a
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M61 with some bling!

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