Supernova SN 2017eaw and NGC 6946, a new image – 25 May 2017
At Virtual Telescope, we continue to follow-up the bright supernova SN 2017eaw in NGC 6946. We have found the supernova still shining close to its maximum of light.
Supernova SN 2017eaw and NGC 6946: 25 May 2017
The image above comes from the sigma-clipping combination of ten, 90-seconds exposures, unfiltered, remotely taken with the 16″-f/3.75 Tenagra III (“Pearl”) robotic unit part of Tenagra Observatories in Arizona. The imaging camera is based on the KAF-16801 CCD. The resulting image scale is 1.2″/pixel. SN 2017eaw magnitude was estimated to be at mag. 12.8 (unfiltered, R-mags for the reference stars from UCAC-4).
We already captured a number of images of this transient, some of them were made public.
We also managed to share this beautiful explosion with our audience in Italy and are still waiting to reschedule to English edition. Below is the video of our webcast in Italian, where we use the telescope which grabbed the image above.
Because this galaxy will be perfectly visible for many months, we will be able to intensively follow-up this explosion and make a nice light curve of it. We were lucky to find it soon after its explosion and we will try to do something like what we did with the legendary supernova SN 2011fe.
We dedicate this image to the memory of the Italian astrophysicist Giovanni Bignami (1944-2017), who suddenly passed away yesterday.
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