My First Super Nova!

[Rodd]

I was fortunate to have finished M101 just a few days ago, then a super nova erupted, providing me with the opportunity to get a before and after image.  I put a hold on my other project and collected 3 hours of luminance on M101, which I added to the 6 hours I had collected for my image.  Since bright stars are typically clipped unless I go through the trouble of collectinbg 10 sec subs and do an HDR composition for each stack, which I did not do.  So the SN is only recorded in luminance.  As its the brightest star in the galaxy now, it would not have contained any color, anyway.   So here are before and after images, with a couple of crops showcasing the 21,000,000 year and 4 day old event.

A couple of points: Since the SN was only recorded on 179 60 sec lum subs, its profile on the full lum stack of 579 60 subs is a bit smaller than it should be.  I did a pretty good job of selectively stretching it so it matches the profile seen on the 179 sub stack.  Also, This was not a complete reprocess, which I will do over the next couple of days.  For this showcase, I created a new lum stack (579 subs), and inserted that into my existing image.  There is a definite improvement in SNR, and the FWHM of the lum channel decreased by a bit.  I think when I do completely reprocess this data set, the improvement will be clearer.  Finally, I upsampled the crops so they would be larger.  You can see they are a bit softer--even softer than the original bin one data.  That is becuase I cropped and upsampled the JPEGs.  Maybe I didn't need to upsample them at all--I can never tell how the forum will display the images.

Before

After

Before

After

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Rodd

[ollypenrice]

Very exciting and a lovely image.

Olly

[Rodd]

3 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Very exciting and a lovely image.

Olly

Thanks Olly.  I might spend a few more nights collecting data on this, if I get any more clear nights.  Too bad the Moon is waxing.  

[simmo39]

That looks like a hell of a bang! lovely.

[Rodd]

1 hour ago, simmo39 said:

That looks like a hell of a bang! lovely.

Indeed. I wonder when it will be at its brightest.  Can’t wait until Betelgeuse goes. We would be imaging that for years!  

[Rodd]

.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Rodd
Duplicate post