Close Supernova in M82

[gary]

Super-close supernova in M82

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2014/01/22 11:31 CST

[h0ughy]

its great they found it but its a bugger we cant see it for ourselves ;)

[cometcatcher]

That's really cool for northern hemisphere viewers. Doesn't get above the horizon for me.

Hey Dave maybe if we get a really really tall ladder? ;)

[gary]

Happy New Year David,

Payback for 1987A perhaps?

[gary]

Just had an email a few minutes ago from Dave Kriege up in Wisconsin.

Despite a -40 wind chill (Fahrenheit or Celsius, take your pick, at -40 they become
both the same), he got out to observe.

[h0ughy]

LOl did he loose his eyebrows on the eyepiece looking at that? it would be something to see thats for sure, maybe not a 1987a but then again its no ISON;)

[glenc]

The last image is interesting.
http://www.iflscience.com/space/star-our-galactic-neighbourhood-just-exploded

[skysurfer]

As a far northern observer not seen yet from cloudy Holland :mad2:
I hope clouds break before February as then I go to South Africa where it remains below the horizon..... Should be visible in my 10cm and with luck in 8cm ...

[Suzy]

Hello Gary :hi:

Naaaaaaah, sn1987a doesn't come close to being topped :whistle:.
Us southerners can claim that until someone is lucky enough to see another naked eye supernova in their lifetime :D. You've got to feel sorry for them though- I thought comet ISON would've been a good payback but it went poof! :violin:
SN1987a is my weakness- I collect, read, anything I can of it. Fond memories!

Our Tom Harradine took a pic of sn1987a- awesome naked eye display isn't it?! With his permission, I got a huge print done of this.
155745


Meanwhile back on topic... :lol:
There's a delightfully interesting story involving the discovery of this supernova. Thanks to fellow IIS'er Carl Gruber for posting in the Comet Watch group I admin on fb.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi
If you have the latest copy of Stellarium and would like to view the area of Sn2014j Try this

http://barry.sarcasmogerdes.com/stellarium/uploads/Sn2014j.zip

Make sure you have the "historic supernovae" plugin loaded at startup

and follow the instructions in the text file.

As we all know M82 is not visible at locations bellow about -19 degrees Dec.

I have used a High res Hubble picture suitably processed to mark the precise(?) position of the supernovae in M82 9:55:42.14 RA +69:40:26.0 Dec

Barry

[cometcatcher]

The very top part of Australia should see it, if they have a low enough horizon. North of Cairns etc. Darwin would be good, except for the LP.

[mithrandir]

Barry, is there any documentation of the format of the textures.json file?

Can the m82.png and textures.json be put in nebula\default, and supernovae.json in modules\Supernovae, both in the user's roaming profile or do they have to go in the Stellarium install directory. Win7 write protects the install dir against everyone except Administrator.

[Barrykgerdes]

None that I know of. It is quite straight forward ASCII . An entry looks like this:-
"2013aa":
{
"type": "Ia",
"maxMagnitude": 11.9,
"peakJD": 2456337,
"alpha": "14h32m33.88s",
"delta": "-44d13m27.8s"
},
I just copied an entry and changed the parameters

It is best to put them in the user area because Stellarium will look there first and if there is an entry it will use that one and ignore any others. However if there is no entry in the user area the changes can be made in the respective Stellarium program folders.

I long since removed all the win 7/8 protection by running a patch "take ownership" on the registry and gave myself full access to all protected file areas that I needed to edit.

Barry

[skysurfer]

Maybe Betelgeuse in the next 1000 years ? Will be visible worldwide except Amundsen Scott base as its decl is only -7 deg S and its magnitude will be nearly as the Full Moon.
Even when it happens in June there will be a reddish star visible with the NE in full daylight just 15 deg south of the Sun !
See the attachment what the landscape looks like on Cerro Armazones, Chile (E-ELT).