The Milky Way galaxy will always be home but the idea of billions of other galaxies, each containing billions of stars and possible earth like planets orbiting those stars, is pretty amazing to think about.
However, stars eventually die out and sometimes they go out with a literal bang. The more scientific term being, supernova. This was in fact happening in a barred spiral galaxy within the Virgo Cluster in constellation Virgo. M61, also known as NGC 4303, is about 52 million light-years away from us earthers and back in May of 2020, supernova SN 2020jfo was discovered.
Such an event was obviously of great interest to astronomers and citizen scientists but for me, I simple wanted to see if I could personally image it with my own equipment.
In addition to M61, I also took advantage of the dark sky and captured data on NGC 7331, a spiral galaxy in constellation Pegasus.
I’m posting this well after the time of recording and acquisition. The supernova is no longer visible and my imaging and processing skills have improved since then so it would be fun having another go at it, though without the supernova.
Gear Details
Mount: Celestron CGX
OTA: Celestron 9.25 EdgeHD w/.7 Focal Reducer (1645mm focal length @ F/7)
Camera: ZWO asi071MC Pro
Guiding: Celestron OAG w/ZWO asi224MC
