Appearance of a Supernova?

[Stargazer_10]

Hi everyone, wondering if someone could tell me what a supernova may look like, and whether one would be visible with a 10" bintel dobsonian. Also any idea where abouts I could find one in the night sky?

[Lee]

They look like a star.... there is one in M65 at present, whether you'll see it visually with a 10" I don't know.... I've imaged a couple recently with an 80mm refractor, you might be in luck...

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

A super novae appear somewhat regularly, but one can never tell when & where they will appear. I say somewhat regularly only because of the sheer number of galaxies that there are. But, the occurance of super novae in any one galaxy, including our own Milky Way, is very irregular, and with a very long time between each.

When one does get discovered in another galaxy, all you will see is a single star that will slowly rise in brilliance to a maximum, and then slowly peeter out. The whole thing happens over a month or two.

A super nova can exceed the brilliance of its parent galaxy by a few times - that means that an exploding star can be 2, 3, even 4 times more brilliant than the 1 trillion stars of a galaxy.

Unless the super nova happens here in the Milky Way, like I said all you will see is a pin point star. The way to identify it is by comparing your visual or photographic experience to other photos of the same galaxy where the super nova wasn't there.

At the moment there are no super novae visible. If you would like to know when one does appear, they are mostly posted in the Astronomy & Amatuer Science forum.

Australian amateurs have quite a track record for discovering super novae. In fact amatuers discover more super novae than professional astronomers by the single fact that there are just so many more amatuer scopes pointed at the sky than professional scopes. This is just one aspect of astronomy where amatuers are making a REAL contribution to science.

PS, I stand corrected with there being no super nova being visible at the moment (thanks Lee!). Have a shot at the one in M65. Thee should be some info on this super nova somewhere in IIS or another forum.

[Stargazer_10]

No worries, I'll keep a look out, thanks for your help!

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

By the way, in 10,000 years next Tuesday, the massive star Eta Carina is expected to blow. This is the very same star that lends its name to the magnificent nebula.

It is currently experiencing a series of precursor eruptions, shedding material in a bipolar bubble shaped cocoon called the Homunculus Nebula. It is visible even in small scopes, with a very distinctive reddish colour, and the tiny bipolar lobes noticeable. A 10" will have no problem making out some of the filament structure within it. The good thing about it is this unique object can be easily hunted from urban areas, and takes high magnification very well. But it is small. This is one object I'd love to sketch some time.

[Stargazer_10]

Sounds good, I have been viewing the carina nebula just recently, so I will keep an eye out for it

[space oddity]

Eta Carina nebula can be seen naked eye, even in Sydney on a clear night. It is huge- 2 degrees across . 10 inch will yield a decent resolution.

[andyc (Andy)]

You'll probably see announcements of favourable supernovae on the pages of IIS, but you can also keep track of recent supernovae at the Rochester Academy of Sciences page of Latest Supernovae, which gives you a listing, in order of brightness, of known supernovae around the sky. With a 10" dob, anything fainter than about 13th mag will be a pretty challenging target, and 14th mag will be really tough even from a dark sky. Not impossible, depending on how good/practised your eyes and optics are! You'll also need a photograph or good finder chart so you can be sure you're seeing the SN and not a faint foreground star. The bad news is that supernovae brighter than mag 13 are quite unusual, though there have been several in the last couple of years... so be patient and keep on the lookout for bright discoveries!

SN2013am in M65 doesn't seem to have brightened to reasonable visibility despite being observed for a month (still near 16th mag), so I wouldn't hold a great deal of hope now that it will brighten enough. Maybe others can correct me if I'm wrong!

Good luck, and happy SN hunting!

[Suzy]

I love observing supernovae!
I nabbed 2 last year; would've been three if the weather played ball.

Some planning is involved- finding good images which show good representative stars visible in the finder to hop to the SN and make sure that it is indeed the SN you are seeing and not just another star.

Generally when one becomes visible thru telescopes, our guys take some wonderful pics that makes that job easy. A mag.12 SN should be do-able for you (they are for me in my 10").

Forget the current one in M65 in Leo. What should be a nice telescope SN to view hasn't turned out that way it seems. It's covered with too much dust by the galaxy. Grrrrr.

Keep an eye out in the following forums: Celestial Events, Observing (esp. this one), and Astronomy and Amateur Science.
If you're serious about trying to nab an SN, feel free to pm me when one is next visible and I'll see what I can do to help, if you need help (if you're on facebook, that's even better).
For me, it's a mind blowing treat to be able eyeball one of these. The fact that we can see a star exploded is just incredible!!!
The last naked eye visible SN in our galaxy was in 1604.
They do happen more regularly, it's just our view is hindered by all the dust in our galaxy. It's something like on average one every century per galaxy. But there's a gazillion galaxies out there (350 billion in the observable universe- fill up a football stadium to the top with peas to give you an idea!), so the pop rate is like one a second!
There was naked eye visible SN1987a which was a gorgeous site in our skies but that belonged to the LMC galaxy.