SN2023ixf in M101

[MikeT]

I'm always amazed at how well SharpCap can perform when live stacking and filtering Last night I wanted to try and capture the new supernova in M101 but after setting up and framing/focus the clouds rolled in as usual for UK based astronomy!

Having nothing to lose I left the rig turned on and allowing SharpCap to select and Live Stack frames based on brightness. After 2.5 hours I came to shut things down but to my delight found that the spiral arms and SN could easily be resolved. Not a great image by normal standards but on a night with just a few cloud gaps this software really gives you a chance to pull out a result

WO Megrez 72 piggyback on LX-200 classic mount
ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro
8 sec exposures, Gain 120. 60 minutes of frames stacked out of 2.5 hours
M101 with SN2023ixf marked. I estimate its magnituse as +12 from comparison with other nearly stars

SN2023ixf 23-05-20.png (217.14 KiB) Viewed 6906 times

SN region crop

SN2023ixf crop.png (50.3 KiB) Viewed 6906 times

Comparison image of the same region I took in 2020

M101 SN region crop.png (117.21 KiB) Viewed 6906 times

Thanks Robin for all your hard work!

Mike

[Menno555]

Nice capture of it.
It's cool to have this in a well known object too

Menno

[timh]

Really exciting to see that. well done, I use SC the same way. Even on the worst nights you can leave it running using the filters in livestack and still capture things.
Tim

[MikeT]

This might save people a few minutes work...

If you want to annotate your M101 images with the SN as a custom object then copy this string and paste it using the button in the Deep Sky Annotation tool

SN2023ixf|||14:03:38.564| +54:18:42.02||||

Mike.