Supernova in M82 - SN 2014J (2014 Jan 29)
During the early evening of January 21, 2014, students and staff at the University College of London’s teaching observatory discovered a supernova in a nearby galaxy known as M82 (aka the Cigar Galaxy). Dr Steve Fossey and students Ben Cooke, Tom Wright, Matthew Wilde and Guy Pollack made the discovery at 19:20 GMT. Complete details can be found in a UCL press release.
The supernova is officially designated SN 2014J and is classify as a Type Ia Supernova. Briefly, these objects involve a binary star system (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a carbon-oxygen white dwarf that accretes matter from the second star. When the white dwarf reaches a critical mass it becomes unstable. A runaway nuclear fusion reaction ensues causing the white dwarf to violently explode apart as a supernova. See Progenitor of a Type Ia Supernova for more details. The typical Type Ia supernova is about 5 billion times brighter than the Sun at its peak. This often brighter than the galaxy the supernova resides in. Additional details about SN 2014J can be found in Wikipedia.
The image above captures the supernova from Bifrost Observatory (Portal, AZ) on the evening of January 29 (MST) using a 12" telescope. SN 2014J appears as the brightest object in M82. Shining at magnitude ~10.5, SN 2014J was near its peak when this image was shot. (See AAVSO light curve)
The image below is the full frame image from which the above image was cropped. It shows M82 in relation to a nearby spiral galaxy known as M81. The pair are located in the constellation Ursa Major approximately 10° northwest of the "Big Dipper" pointer star Dubhe (Alpha Ursae Majoris). M81 and M82 are located at a distance of 12 million light-years from us, while their distance from each other is 150,000 light years. They are the largest members of the M81 Group, a physical association of 34 galaxies.
Technical Details
- Object: Supernova in M82 - SN 2014J
- Object Position (Equinox 2000): RA= 9h 55.8m, Dec= +69° 41´, Constellation = Ursa Major
- Date/Time: 2014 Jan 29 at 04:47 UTC
- Location: Bifrost Astronomical Observatory, Portal, AZ
- Mount: Astro-Physics 1600GTO
- Telescope: ASA N12 Corrected Newtonian Astrograph
- Camera: SBIG STL-11000M
- Field of View: 1.91° x 1.28° at 1.72 arc-sec/pixel (web version: 7.4 arc-sec/pixel)
- Exposure: L (16x180s), R:G:B (8x120s), f/3.6
- File Name: SN2014J-B01w.jpg
- Processing (CCDStack 2): Calibration, Registration, Normalization, Combine Stack, Deconvolution
- Processing (Photoshop CS6): Cropping
- Original Image Size: 2672 x 4008 pixels (10.7 MP); 8.9" x 13.4" @ 300 dpi (full frame)
- Rights: Copyright 2014 by Fred Espenak. All Rights Reserved. See: Image Licensing.
