A sea monster in space!

The latest completed image from Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory is shown above. M77 is a barred spiral galaxy 47 million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster in Greek mythology. Cetus was slain by Perseus in order to save the princess Andromeda from Poseidon’s wrath!). Fitting for this galaxy because it belongs to the Seyfert class of galaxies, one of the two largest groups of galaxies that contain active galactic nuclei which are characterized by the presence of a supermassive black hole at the center. Perhaps Perseus needs to come back to deal with that! At any rate, active galactic nuclei or “AGN” are the most luminous sources of electromagnetic radiation in the universe and while most of the radiation is in the form of high energy xrays and ultraviolet, 5% of Seyferts, including this one, are also very strong in radio emissions. This has been studied extensively by the VLA (Very Large Array), an array of radio telescopes right here in New Mexico! The strong radio source is designated “Cetus A”.

Supernova 2018ivc is shown here. The white dot at the rough intersection of the 2 white lines is all that is left from the original explosion!

2 years ago I captured the only supernova known to have been observed in M77, of course after its initial discovery but not long after. Details are in this post. The remnants are now largely obscured in the fully resolved image which I completed just this year from Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory. You can see what the supernova looks like now in the image above. The full resolution color image should be available early next week. You can simply click on the “My astroimages” link in the right column of this page. The thumbnail of the image should be up by then.
Image capture info:
Telescope: RiDK 400mm
Mount: Paramount MEII
Camera: SBIG 16803
Data: 6,6,7,8 hours LRGB ; Pixinsight processing

Thanks for reading!

DrDave

A Star Explodes!

On November 24 a supernova was discovered in the galaxy M77. Named “SN 2018 ivc” it is the only supernova to date discovered in the brightest Seyfert galaxy we know! M77 is an active galaxy with a quasar-like nucleus. It is pretty bright for a galaxy, about 9th magnitude, and is located in the constellation Cetus. A supernova discovery in a Messier object is pretty rare, and as it just so happened I had started an imaging project at Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory on the galaxy when one of the Astronomical Society members alerted us to the discovery! The supernova is a “Type II” which is distinguished by the presence of hydrogen in the spectrum. (Perhaps a spectroscopy project for a future event!) I was able to locate the star in one of the 15 minute frames I had taken of the galaxy (see below). Initially it was around 14-15 magnitude, located pretty close to the core . In the image I obtained nearly 2 weeks later it does not appear to have changed significantly in brightness.

Single raw uncalibrated 15 minute image, unfiltered, of SN 2018 ivc. Dec 5 at 5:20 UT. From Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory, Mayhill NM. The supernova is located at the intersection of the 2 black tic marks