Last week a new type 1a supernova (SN2014J) was spotted in Messier 82 – better known as the Cigar Galaxy. I was desperate to photograph it but the weather was not on my side. Finally last night I stole about half an hour of observing time between clouds and managed to get 9 pictures of the galaxy. That’s not nearly enough for high-quality image processing, so here’s my “quick & dirty” effort. The quality is not great but at least you can see the supernova!
On the left hand side, the long, thin object is M82, the Cigar Galaxy. The round galaxy on the right hand side is M81, better known as Bode’s Galaxy. The supernova is the bright star within the body of the cigar.
And here’s a close-up
If the skies clear up again, I’ll head out and try and achieve something better than this. In the time I had, I wasn’t able to get my autoguider working, so that limited the length of my exposures to 30 seconds.
Jonathan Gazeley 