by Bob Jardine
The seeing was unusually good, as judged by some killer views of Saturn at 300X+ (5mm Takahashi LE). But the transparency was off -- lots of moisture in the air. So I was a little bit dubious about getting a peek at the recently-discovered Supernova in M100. I gave it a try anyway.
Sure enough, the Supernova (SN2006X) was visible, although I wasn't sure at the time. I had rushed out of the house in such a hurry that I hadn't taken time to print a chart. I just remembered that it was supposed to be slightly brighter than mag 14 and less than one arcminute South of M100's center.
I was doubtful, but I drew a little sketch, just in case. The other field stars I drew (a pair of mag 14.2 stars) made it pretty easy to match up with the AAVSO chart and photographs on the web. You just have to avoid getting confused by the different scales (in order to see the SN, I had to use pretty high power to darken the sky background, so my eyepiece view and diagram had a tiny scale compared with the photos and charts).
Joe Bob sez: check it out (that is, if it is still bright enough when we next have clear skies)
(see http://www.supernovae.net/supernova.html or http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m100_sn2006X.html for more info)
Posted on sf-bay-tac Feb 26, 2006 17:28:24 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 02, 2006 19:47:12 PT