ASTRO: SN 2010jl in UGC 5189A

Super nova SN 2010jl was discovered November 3rd. It resides is the
very weird galaxy UGC 5189. It appears to be two galaxies torn apart by
a collision. The western one NGC 5189A is the home of the super nova.
It drowns out much of the galaxy. This galaxy was on my Arp-like list
for imaging so when the SN was announced in it I had to rush to grab it.
Then everything went wrong.

I tried to image it just before dawn but ran into lots of clouds and
other problems. A power transformer had blown up earlier that night and
hit our house with 9600 volts blowing the main circuit breaker and many
others. Blew out all lights that were on and all my serge protection
strips though most on them survived while the surge protectors literally
went up in smoke. One thing that didn't survive was the power supply to
my imaging computer. The surge protector and it died. High winds had
caused me to shut down so the computer and observatory were not powered
at the time. To get the SN I hooked up a 25 amp power supply to one of
my ham radios. That worked but the computer said it wasn't the right
supply (how can it tell with only the two power wires?) and went into
what Dell called "limp mode". It was running super slow and acting
funny but after the winds died down I tried for the SN anyway. I went
to bed and not until I went to process it today (after locating a "new"
correct power supply) did I find the computer had not taken the blue
frames! I tried my hand at creating a pseudo blue from the red and
green frames by adding the difference between them to the green frame.
Not great results but rain and snow is forecast for the next week so
went with it.

While the 13th magnitude SN is rather obvious I've marked it in the
cropped image. It is just east of a bright knot in the galaxy so looks
double. The knot seems too bright compared to the only web photo of the
galaxy I found. Not sure why.
That photo is at:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/...iotw/u5189.gif

The AAVSO's announcement of the SN is at:
http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-222

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10'x3 B=pseudo, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

I'll redo it when the weather clears if the moon isn't in the way.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

you should submit that image to spaceweather.com and maybe apod.

Your effort with the synthesized blue channel worked for you, good
job.

I'm going to start playing with scripts so that I can do some
un-attended imaging, won't be fully automatic (need to replace the
ST-4's and a few other items so fully automatic probably won't
happen).

I'm getting too old and too lazy to stay up all night especially these
cold humid night (cold by california standards - low was 40 degrees
the other night 8).



On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:53:30 -0600, Rick Johnson
wrote:

Super nova SN 2010jl was discovered November 3rd. It resides is the
very weird galaxy UGC 5189. It appears to be two galaxies torn apart by
a collision. The western one NGC 5189A is the home of the super nova.
It drowns out much of the galaxy. This galaxy was on my Arp-like list
for imaging so when the SN was announced in it I had to rush to grab it.
Then everything went wrong.

I tried to image it just before dawn but ran into lots of clouds and
other problems. A power transformer had blown up earlier that night and
hit our house with 9600 volts blowing the main circuit breaker and many
others. Blew out all lights that were on and all my serge protection
strips though most on them survived while the surge protectors literally
went up in smoke. One thing that didn't survive was the power supply to
my imaging computer. The surge protector and it died. High winds had
caused me to shut down so the computer and observatory were not powered
at the time. To get the SN I hooked up a 25 amp power supply to one of
my ham radios. That worked but the computer said it wasn't the right
supply (how can it tell with only the two power wires?) and went into
what Dell called "limp mode". It was running super slow and acting
funny but after the winds died down I tried for the SN anyway. I went
to bed and not until I went to process it today (after locating a "new"
correct power supply) did I find the computer had not taken the blue
frames! I tried my hand at creating a pseudo blue from the red and
green frames by adding the difference between them to the green frame.
Not great results but rain and snow is forecast for the next week so
went with it.

While the 13th magnitude SN is rather obvious I've marked it in the
cropped image. It is just east of a bright knot in the galaxy so looks
double. The knot seems too bright compared to the only web photo of the
galaxy I found. Not sure why.
That photo is at:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/...iotw/u5189.gif

The AAVSO's announcement of the SN is at:
http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-222

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10'x3 B=pseudo, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

I'll redo it when the weather clears if the moon isn't in the way.

Rick

Gee, 40F is my high temperature this time of the year. It's noon here
and 35F. Pretty warm day in fact. It's the -30C nights that got me to
imaging from the house while I'm snug in bed. -40C isn't uncommon, or
wasn't. Last year was the first we didn't hit it. Not even close -32C
or so was the low. A very warm and strange winter. Hard on wildlife as
they depend on a deep snow blanket for survival and it kept melting
until January exposing them to weather. Found lots of winter killed
animals freeze dried last winter. Odd but it was the warm days that
killed them by melting their survival blanket of snow. Meant I didn't
have to blow the road as often. Blowing a 1 km private road is getting
a bit old for this geezer.

Rick


On 11/11/2010 10:24 AM, glen youman wrote:
you should submit that image to spaceweather.com and maybe apod.

Your effort with the synthesized blue channel worked for you, good
job.

I'm going to start playing with scripts so that I can do some
un-attended imaging, won't be fully automatic (need to replace the
ST-4's and a few other items so fully automatic probably won't
happen).

I'm getting too old and too lazy to stay up all night especially these
cold humid night (cold by california standards - low was 40 degrees
the other night 8).



On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:53:30 -0600, Rick
wrote:

Super nova SN 2010jl was discovered November 3rd. It resides is the
very weird galaxy UGC 5189. It appears to be two galaxies torn apart by
a collision. The western one NGC 5189A is the home of the super nova.
It drowns out much of the galaxy. This galaxy was on my Arp-like list
for imaging so when the SN was announced in it I had to rush to grab it.
Then everything went wrong.

I tried to image it just before dawn but ran into lots of clouds and
other problems. A power transformer had blown up earlier that night and
hit our house with 9600 volts blowing the main circuit breaker and many
others. Blew out all lights that were on and all my serge protection
strips though most on them survived while the surge protectors literally
went up in smoke. One thing that didn't survive was the power supply to
my imaging computer. The surge protector and it died. High winds had
caused me to shut down so the computer and observatory were not powered
at the time. To get the SN I hooked up a 25 amp power supply to one of
my ham radios. That worked but the computer said it wasn't the right
supply (how can it tell with only the two power wires?) and went into
what Dell called "limp mode". It was running super slow and acting
funny but after the winds died down I tried for the SN anyway. I went
to bed and not until I went to process it today (after locating a "new"
correct power supply) did I find the computer had not taken the blue
frames! I tried my hand at creating a pseudo blue from the red and
green frames by adding the difference between them to the green frame.
Not great results but rain and snow is forecast for the next week so
went with it.

While the 13th magnitude SN is rather obvious I've marked it in the
cropped image. It is just east of a bright knot in the galaxy so looks
double. The knot seems too bright compared to the only web photo of the
galaxy I found. Not sure why.
That photo is at:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/...iotw/u5189.gif

The AAVSO's announcement of the SN is at:
http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-222

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10'x3 B=pseudo, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

I'll redo it when the weather clears if the moon isn't in the way.

Rick


--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

What a weird object. Well worth imaging even without a SN.

Hope the damage by the surge wasn't too expensive...

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
ster.com...
Super nova SN 2010jl was discovered November 3rd. It resides is the
very weird galaxy UGC 5189. It appears to be two galaxies torn apart by
a collision. The western one NGC 5189A is the home of the super nova.
It drowns out much of the galaxy. This galaxy was on my Arp-like list
for imaging so when the SN was announced in it I had to rush to grab it.
Then everything went wrong.

I tried to image it just before dawn but ran into lots of clouds and
other problems. A power transformer had blown up earlier that night and
hit our house with 9600 volts blowing the main circuit breaker and many
others. Blew out all lights that were on and all my serge protection
strips though most on them survived while the surge protectors literally
went up in smoke. One thing that didn't survive was the power supply to
my imaging computer. The surge protector and it died. High winds had
caused me to shut down so the computer and observatory were not powered
at the time. To get the SN I hooked up a 25 amp power supply to one of
my ham radios. That worked but the computer said it wasn't the right
supply (how can it tell with only the two power wires?) and went into
what Dell called "limp mode". It was running super slow and acting
funny but after the winds died down I tried for the SN anyway. I went
to bed and not until I went to process it today (after locating a "new"
correct power supply) did I find the computer had not taken the blue
frames! I tried my hand at creating a pseudo blue from the red and
green frames by adding the difference between them to the green frame.
Not great results but rain and snow is forecast for the next week so
went with it.

While the 13th magnitude SN is rather obvious I've marked it in the
cropped image. It is just east of a bright knot in the galaxy so looks
double. The knot seems too bright compared to the only web photo of the
galaxy I found. Not sure why.
That photo is at:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/...iotw/u5189.gif

The AAVSO's announcement of the SN is at:
http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-222

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10'x3 B=pseudo, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

I'll redo it when the weather clears if the moon isn't in the way.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Power company is paying for everything since it was their transformer
that shorted out creating the problem. And mainly just a bunch of surge
protectors that died doing their job. UPS died and while the
manufacturer is replacing it I told them to ask for recovery from the
power company. Only other major damage was the phones. They weren't on
a serge protector. Most in the area had left for the season but one had
returned for deer hunting. They fared far worse with much of their
aluminum wiring melted but not before their refrigerator compressor was
fried. With no surge protectors their TV and even electric clocks were
killed as well. My refrigerator wasn't running when it hit fortunately
nor was the furnace. My copper wiring suffered no damage but some walls
were cut to check the wires that are yet to be repaired. Power company
did the checking and haven't got back to fix their holes. I was glad
the observatory's power switch was off when it hit! That could have
been a nasty. I had only turned it off five minutes before due to the
high winds.

Rick

On 11/14/2010 3:22 PM, Stefan Lilge wrote:
What a weird object. Well worth imaging even without a SN.

Hope the damage by the surge wasn't too expensive...

Stefan

"Rick schrieb im Newsbeitrag
ster.com...
Super nova SN 2010jl was discovered November 3rd. It resides is the
very weird galaxy UGC 5189. It appears to be two galaxies torn apart by
a collision. The western one NGC 5189A is the home of the super nova.
It drowns out much of the galaxy. This galaxy was on my Arp-like list
for imaging so when the SN was announced in it I had to rush to grab it.
Then everything went wrong.

I tried to image it just before dawn but ran into lots of clouds and
other problems. A power transformer had blown up earlier that night and
hit our house with 9600 volts blowing the main circuit breaker and many
others. Blew out all lights that were on and all my serge protection
strips though most on them survived while the surge protectors literally
went up in smoke. One thing that didn't survive was the power supply to
my imaging computer. The surge protector and it died. High winds had
caused me to shut down so the computer and observatory were not powered
at the time. To get the SN I hooked up a 25 amp power supply to one of
my ham radios. That worked but the computer said it wasn't the right
supply (how can it tell with only the two power wires?) and went into
what Dell called "limp mode". It was running super slow and acting
funny but after the winds died down I tried for the SN anyway. I went
to bed and not until I went to process it today (after locating a "new"
correct power supply) did I find the computer had not taken the blue
frames! I tried my hand at creating a pseudo blue from the red and
green frames by adding the difference between them to the green frame.
Not great results but rain and snow is forecast for the next week so
went with it.

While the 13th magnitude SN is rather obvious I've marked it in the
cropped image. It is just east of a bright knot in the galaxy so looks
double. The knot seems too bright compared to the only web photo of the
galaxy I found. Not sure why.
That photo is at:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/...iotw/u5189.gif

The AAVSO's announcement of the SN is at:
http://www.aavso.org/aavso-special-notice-222

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10'x3 B=pseudo, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

I'll redo it when the weather clears if the moon isn't in the way.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".