This is M61 or NGC 4303, an intermediate barred spiral galaxy located approximately 52 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. This was an unplanned object that I have to thank Hap Griffin (Imaging infinity) for alerting me as well as others in a Facebook post last week about a newly formed Supernova in M61. Although I was working on a different deep sky object I decided to image this since they are not often visible with amateur equipment and in good locations to image them in the first place. In this image the Supernova is the blue star and is actually the individual only extra-galactic star visible, all of the other stars are in our own Milky Way making them much closer.

It turned out to be a more interesting region than I remember and it is no wonder as I reviewed my pretty unexciting image of this region from three years ago. The galaxy shows two loosely developed spiral arms and is estimated to be 100,000 light-years across making it similar in size to the Milky Way. This galaxy has a high rate of star formation and it is believed to house a supermassive black-hole. A couple of other prominent galaxies are also visible in this cropped image.

Supernova SN2020ifo was discovered May 6 and it is still glowing in brightness as of this writing. It is classified as a Type II supernova which occurs when a supergiant star undergoes a violent collapse after a star runs out of elements which support nuclear fusion. When fusion stops the outward pressure caused by the fusion stops and the star implodes and produces an explosion that is 100 million times brighter than the sun. Quick chem/phys lesson: gravity forces light elements in a star such as hydrogen and helium together to form heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen and such. This is nuclear fusion and stars do fusion up to elements such as iron (26 protons). Producing elements heavier than iron using fusion takes energy which is why fusion stops at this point.

Lastly, I have been focusing on focusing with my ZWO EAF autofocuser these last few weeks - something I should have done long ago. One thing big that prevented the autofocuser from working the way I thought it would work was backlash. Another thing you may have noticed was my use of APT and N.I.N.A. I am still using APT as my capture and control program, however, I am using N.I.N.A. for autofocusing and monitoring the focus throughout the imaging session. I am happy to say that this object is the first in a long time that I did not have to trash exposures due to bad focus. I have produced a few videos on my efforts with autofocusing.

Video 1 - Manual Focus Graph: Link

Video 2 - Backlash (ZWO Method): Link

Video 3 - Autofocus Routine with NINA: Link