Here is a test image I took of NGC7814 with supernova 2021rhu, using my new EdgeHD 1100. I've been dialing it in for about a month, and honing my skills using it. There are still some problems left to iron out, but my images taken with it continue to steadily improve. I resampled the image down 50% as I only had 56 minutes of data, so the image was a bit noisy and not very deep. Seeing was decent, but transparency not so much. I captured as many images as I could before it got too close to my house after crossing the meridian. The rain and the full moon a few days later pretty much put an end to collecting more images, probably for the rest of the year.
Note the distinctive blue color of the supernova just below the core of the galaxy in the image. This type Ia supernova (caused by a
completely self destructing white dwarf after it accreted too much material from a close companion star) was discovered on 2020-07-01 by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), shining at a magnitude of 15.7. It probably erupted within only a day or two prior to this discovery date. The supernova peaked in brightness at magnitude 12.5 about 15 days later at around July 15th. Despite my image being taken over 100 days later, its still brighter than magnitude 16, about the same brightness as when it was discovered! It takes months for type Ia supernova to fade out to invisibility. Here is a link to light curve data from the ZTF facility, which nicely shows the rapid peak and gradual fall in brightness (the horizontal axis of the graph is in days, using modified Julian days (MJS), with day 0 at 0:00 November 17, 1858):
https://lasair.roe.ac.uk/object/ZTF21abiuvdk/Its a cool universe, but I sure am glad all this explode-y stuff is very far away from us!
Each of the 8 images stacked for this image were live-stacks (in SharpCap) of 70 x 6 second exposures.
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