Thursday, April 2, 2015

Nova in Sagittarius + MORE!

Westcott,
I got an email alert on my ipod from Sky and Telescope, while we were on vacation in California 2 weeks ago, to the fact a new nova had been discovered by an amateur astronomer in Australia on March 15.  It was reported at 6.0 magnitude at that time.  A week later it was at 4.3.  I couldn't see it with the lights of Stockton blazing away.  When we got home a week later it was reported to have dimmed to 5.2.  I copied Sagittarius from one of my large star charts (down to 8th mag.) and marked the nova's position, from a photo online, in red on it.  The nova was then reported to be brightening again.  On March 30, our sky was finally clear in the AM so I went out at 5:30am and was surprised it was actually visible to the naked eye.  I took several shots at different ISO's.  I'm sending you the one shot at 6 sec 1600 iso with a Canon 20D and 55mm lens at 2.8.  It was on a fixed tripod.  I compared It with other close star with the same brightness and they were at 4.65 magnitude.  If you look at the teapot's triangular top, draw a straight line between the 2 stars marking the base of the lid.  The nova is the obvious star half way between the 2 stars and a little below the imaginary line.
If the other club members were not aware of the nova they can google it at sgr-2 nova 2015.  It is the second nova in Sag this year.  The first one only got to 8th mag.  You can see what the present magnitude is at http://www.aavso.org/apps/webobs/results/?star=PNV+J18365700-2855420  .
The other 3 pictures I'm sending are ones I took it the back yard earlier in March.  I wanted to get them before they swung over into the I.F. lights.
M-42 Orion Nebula,    M-1 Crab nebula,    and the triplet galaxies M-65, 66, and NGC 3628 in Leo.
I still haven't figured out how to put them on our club blog.  If you could, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks, Ron Pugh



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