SBIG is pleased to share this set of images submitted by Rod Pommier of Portland, OR, USA. It is a before-and-after shot of Supernova 2011dh. It also comes with a nice background story about how other members of the astronomical community found and used Rod’s images to complement their own work in imaging the event with radio wavelengths.

Image by Rodney F. Pommier. Used by permission.

Image subject: M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, and NGC 5195, before and after supernova SN 2011dh

Equipment used: STL 11000M, Baader Planetarium LRGB filters. Celestron Compustar C14 Telescope/Mount. with 0.75x focal reducer (f/8).

Location and date:  Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA; 2011-05-08/09 (left) and 2011-06-15 (right).

Method:
Left image: LRGB exposures=184:70:70:70 minutes=7 hours:04 minutes total exposure.
Right image: Same, supplemented with LRGB=44:44:44:40 minutes=2 hours:52 minutes additional exposure, for grand total exposure of 9 hours:56 minutes.

Software used: MaxImDL, Photoshop

Comments: This image has a great background story! I was recently contacted by a group of professional European Radio Astronomers who had just imaged the supernova at radio wavelengths. To do this, they connected a network of radio telescopes in Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and Finland using the very long baseline interferometry technique. In so doing, they made a radio telescope roughly the size of Europe that permitted them to image the supernova with unprecedented resolution, down to a fraction of a light-year. They said the equivalent would be to image a golf ball on the lunar surface. They were going to show their image in multiple European press releases. However, it is very difficult for the public to interpret what they are seeing in radio astronomy images, so they wanted to display their image alongside a visible light image of the galaxy and supernova for reference. They searched the internet thoroughly and they liked this image, taken with the STL 11000M, the best. They asked permission to use it in their press releases provided they credited me. I was happy that my amateur image was able to help this group of professional astronomers. Here are some links to a couple of the press releases:

For Spain (in Spanish):
http://www.iaa.es/sites/default/files/SN2011dh.pdf

For The Netherlands (In English. Click on the embedded images to enlarge them):
http://www.astron.nl/about-astron/press-public/news/youngest-supernova-imaged-just-after-explosion/youngest-supernova-ima

We hope you enjoyed this image set from Rod Pommier and the story that goes with it. If you wish to share your own images on SBIG’s blog, please click here for instructions. Of course, you are free to share your work on our Facebook community page as well!