Supernovae
On the night of the 25th of February 2014, the Leopold Figl Observatory with it 1.5m telescope came back on line after its winter hibernation period. I was lucky enough to be the first to use it. Thankfully everything work perfectly and Prof. Zeilinger and I were able to take many images of two (at the time) famous supernovae - M1, The Crab Nebula and SN2014J in M82.
M1 - The Crab Nebula
The Crab Nebula is the remnant of SN1054, a supernova that was recorded by the chinese in 1054 A.D. Located only 2 kpc (6500 ly) from Earth, the supernova was visible during the daytime. It has since dimmed and its remnant was only rediscovered in 1731.
Its dimensions are a little over 4 x 6 arcmins, hence it doesn't quite fit into the FOV of the Leopold-Figl observatory. We observed the nebula in the following four bands: Ha, OIII, Bessel V and Bessel B. The above image is an RGB composite with R=Ha, G=OIII and B=Bessel B.
SN 2014 J in M82
SN 2014 J was discovered by a group of undergraduate students at UCL on the 21rd of January 2014. It is the bright point at the right edge of M82. We observed the Type 1a Supernova 5 weeks later and 3 weeks after peak brightness. The spectrum of the supernova shows that SN 2104 J lies behind a large amount of interstellar gas. Type 1a supernovas are the most common in the universe and are used as so-called "standard candles" to measure distances to galaxies.
Our image is an RGB composite with R=Bessel R, G= Bessel V and B=Bessel B. The dimensions of M82 are around 11 x 4 arcmin, so I mosiaced two separate images together to get the whole of M82 onto a single image.
