I just shot another 60" image of M-51. As you might expect, with so little time between pictures there's no real difference (other than the seeing looks better tonight). However, it occured to me that I had shot M-51 before so I looked through the pictures on my web page and found one from 27 April 2000. http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/slas/patrickw/PATRICKW013.JPG While also taken with the C-14 this was taken at f/7 for 5 minutes using an SBIG ST-6B. I see nothing at the SN's location in that picture but I sure do in the one I took last night (see below). But (sorry Joe) I'm not seeing it in your picture (http://www.utahastronomy.com/Joeb/m51color). Opinions? Patrick Patrick Wiggins wrote:
With the sky being so nice tonight (and having a strong desire to think about something other the barbaric events in London) I decided to try and get a picture of the supernova in M51.
So I rolled the roof off of my observatory and used the C-14/ST-10XME to shoot this unguided 60" exposure of M-51 at f/5.5:
http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/temp/M51SN001.JPG
That's a stretched version and the SN (arrowed) seems to show up pretty well.
Looking at the raw image, however, showed me why we've been having so much trouble eyeballing it through a telescope. The SN is located right in the middle of a very dense and bright part of one of the spiral arms.
It was only after stretching the image to tone down the background that the SN seems to be visible.
I say "seems" as the on line image I found shows a fairly bright star right next to the SN so I guess the only way to tell if my suspect is the SN for sure will be to take another image in a few weeks after the SN has subsided.
Patrick