A couple of bright(ish) supernovae have appeared; SN 2020ue in NGC 4363 and SN 2020io in M100. I posted an Observers Challenge on the BAA website this week on these, so please check it out. I managed to image SN 2020ue this morning using iTelescope in New Mexico. It seems to have become brighter since discovery. There may be prospects of good weather this weekend, so followup observations will be welcome.
2019 – how was it for you?
And on the vein of the weather – it felt to me, without any objective evidence, that the observing weather in 2019 was a bit poor. Interesting to read the reports on the BAA forum, which suggested that it was about an average year. Though for Deep Sky observers, there are some further limitations on what you would call ‘available nights’ around new Moon. In my neck of the words, although there have been a few apparently promising nights around sunset, but the time it’s got dark, fog and dew had become ensconced stopping all observing from my back garden.
Perhaps the poor weather is one reason why there have been fewer images and observations dropping into my inbox – and many thanks to those who have sent in their recent work.
It will be interesting to see how 2020 pans out.
Image of StDr 1 by Peter GoodhewNew planetary nebula in Gemini
I was interested to see Peter Goodhew’s nice image of the planetary nebula StDr 1 on his Members Page – this is a ‘new’ PNe having been discovered quite recently by Xavier Strottner and Marcel Drechsler, and reported on planetarynebulae.net
Section meeting
I am pleased to let you know the final act for the line-up is confirmed – David Davies will be speaking about ‘Fumbling in the dark’, The programme has been issued, and bookings are now open on the BAA website. I have also created a flier for the meeting – perhaps if you belong to a local society you might be able to circulate it round your society. There is some exhibition space available at the venue, so if you (or your local soc) would like some space, please let me know.
Sorry, sounding like a broken record (does this simile even work any more?) – I have made more good progress on the 2018 Newsletter and it should be out soon. And am gearing up to getting the 2020 Newsletter out in Feb.
Clear, dark skies Callum
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