SN 2011 FE at last.

[Doc]

What a night last night

Set up scope and polar aligned, but as soon as I had finished and was about to start my three star alignment it started to rain, so I covered the scope and mount.

One hour later and it was still cloudy I decided to strip all down and put it away, I was really annoyed as it's been ages since I've been out, so I had to put scope, watec, leads etc away.

Had a few beers then just before going to bed at 23.30 I look outside and guess what clear and cloud free

So I decided to drag the scope back out and find this supernova in M101. I couldn't be bothered to do a proper polar alignment, so just pointed north and undone the clutches and swinged the scope over into the general vicinity of M101.

Placed in the 28mm Uwan and with Sky6 running on the laptop I found the bright stars TYC 3852-468-1 and TYC 3852-267-1 mag 9 and 8 respectively.

And making up a triangle with these two stars was one bright star that wasn't on my laptop screen, I checked and compared both images and was certain I was looking at this SN 2011 FE.

There was no hint of the galaxy through both my 28mm and my 16mm Uwans as the moon put pay to this being nearly full. I would estimate the supernova to be slightly dimmer then the two guiding stars so I would say about mag 10.

I would say the William Optics GT-81 gave a fantastic view and stars looked fantastic through it, when I compare it to what the 16" dob looked like on stars I'm amazed, they are just simply pinpoints of light and the colour was great.

Overall a quick but worth while night.

[banner001]

congratulations!

[umadog]

Nice! It's brighter than Mag 10 right now, it seems. I've not yet got a positive ID on it. Will try again when the clouds go away. Hopefully Tuesday night.

[Mark at Beaufort]

Glad you had a session with your new scope Mick. I saw the SN on saturday night and comparing nearby stars I estimated it to be almost the same as a 9.95 star.

Lets hope that once the Moon is beyond Full we might get a better chance later in the week.

Mark

[callisto]

Nice! It's brighter than Mag 10 right now, it seems. I've not yet got a positive ID on it. Will try again when the clouds go away. Hopefully Tuesday night.

Same here, think I spotted it but not 100% sure