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
