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Gary,
Here’s an image from tonight. I assume the SN is the brightish thing around 3 arcsec SE of the core but it is difficult to separate it from the core and I don’t have any comparison pics to check.
Nick.
Alex,
There’s a good summary of the prospects for this shower by Rob McNaught here. This is an updated version of the presentation given at the recent The Astronomer meeting. David Asher also has a very good summary on his page here.
There are some images of the parent comet (a real pygmy) in the BAA comet archive here.
Nick.
That is sad news. Dud was certainly a great character and great entertainment. His Fullerscopes telescopes really looked the part too. I had a 12-inch Newtonian on a MkIV mount for many years and it did a pretty good job although some of the mechanical engineering was novel. That was never Fullerscopes’ strong point. I also used the 18″ f/7 at Charterhouse, Somerset when I was a lad. It looked very impressive in the 1975 Handbook photo shown below and was even more impressive close up although it was a brute to use and I think Jeremy Shears had broken it before I got there…
Nick.
Robin,
Getting a spectrum with that dispersion of an object that faint is very impressive stuff. Do you know if there is a central database of amateur spectra anywhere?
Nick.
Yes, a very good meeting, well attended at an excellent venue with a nice lunch too. Thanks to everyone involved in the organisation. I’ve got recordings of the talks and the speakers’ slides so I’ll upload these soonish so that those who were not there can get a flavour of the event. In the meantime here are a couple of photos from the event.
Prof Andrew Norton talking about Gamma Ray Bursts
The OU Meade 16-inch in a Norman Walker floating dome
Hi Sheridan,
I don’t currently have any suggestions for covers but referring to Pluto as a “minor planet” is likely to get the “Pluto is a planet” supporters rather upset. It is officially a “dwarf planet” although, to me, it is just a giant, dormant, comet nucleus…
Nick.
Yes, welcome to the BAA. As Jeremy says the VSS are a very active section and they will be able to provide a lot of help and guidance with regard to variable star observing. There are lots of other sections too so have a browse around the site to see what you are interested in. Also, since you are in Walton access to London is fairly easy so come along to one of our main meetings if you can. We also have a meeting next weekend in Milton Keynes which is themed around stars. If you do make it to a meeting search me out and say hello.
Nick.
Indeed. An excellent weekend all round and I would definitely encourage people to come along. It’s a great opportunity to see excellent talks in a rural environment with very good food and plenty of time to discuss astronomy (and many other things) in the bar afterwards. All the talks were excellent but Gerry Gilmore’s talk on Gaia was outstanding and an absolute model of how to do it. You need to get your booking in early though since spaces are always limited.
Nick.
Hi James,
There has been a lot of discussion about this and it is pretty unlikely that this is a meteorite. The Minor Planets Mailing List discussion on this is worth reading. You can find it here.
Nick.
Paul,
Unfortunately not. According to the Handbook, page 10, the penumbral phase starts at 04:53 just as the moon is setting so I suppose it is possible that observers with a very clear western horizon might see some effects but it will be a difficult observation. The next TLE is October 8th (Handbook page 12) and we don’t get to see any of that either!
Nick.
I’m not sure it’s right for me to comment on my own comments but here’s my V band lightcurve with and without the galaxy subtracted. It is clear that the subtraction makes a significant difference now and this will only become more important as the SN fades.
Jeremy,
The AAVSO thread is correct that the main problem here is the lumpy background of the galaxy. A uniform background would be fine since you could estimate it in the same way you do the sky and then subtract it from the measured counts. A lumpy background is much more difficult to handle and while using a small photometric aperture helps to a certain extent there is only so small you can go. As the thread says, the only real solution is to find a way to subtract the galaxy. I’ve been doing this using some IRAF routines to synthesise an SN-free galaxy but these are not particularly user friendly and IRAF is Unix/Linux based and so not widely available to amateurs. I wonder if people have any ideas for Windows based ways of doing this? This is becoming significant now as the SN fades.
The graph below shows the problem. It shows cuts through the SN (about 13.0V) normal and parallel to M82’s plane and a cut through one of the comp stars (13.4V). The pixel values are sky subtracted. The comp star is well away from the galaxy but the SN is in it and lies on a very lumpy background that will distort the counts.
Pixel value counts through the SN and one of the comp stars (134) obtained on 2014 April 5.
Gary,
I finally managed to get an image of this possible nova this morning after days of grey fug in the south east. A quick reduction using CMC-14 gives V=10.7 (47 refs, 0.04mag). There is a 13th mag star (CMC-14 202142.3+310318) just south which will be troublesome as the nova fades.
Roy,
I get a scroll bar on my browser when its width is less than 1100 pixels. I guess this is the targeted page width.
