An image of the bright supernova painfully close to the core of NGC 4088. I had extremely good seeing last night, with very tight star images, and noticed that the image of the SN was slightly elongated E-W. After much investigation I unearthed a really high quality image taken at Kitt Peak which shows there is a bright region (star/HII??) near the core just 1.5" from the supernova. Further processing of my images managed to almost separate object and SN in my own image. As a final test I rescaled and blinked my image at 1000% scale with the best pre-discovery image I could find..... This clearly showed the supernova blinking just 1.5" east of the existing core brightness. In all the other images I've studied the supernova appears circular or just slightly elongated, even in the Bernd Gahrken image with an 80cm instrument. The older image (NB, it's mirror flipped) at AOP, clearly shows the permanent bright object in this galaxy's core. http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/n4088shade.jpg I have not even attempted photometry in these cluttered galaxy core surroundings!!! Of course, part of the reason my star images were so sharp was that the galaxy was so close to the zenith!

pow_20091231_2025965081.jpg (107.4 kB)