10 days ago, Koichi Itagaki, an amateur astronomer in Japan, was the first to discover a new supernova in M101, also known as the Pinwheel galaxy. 21 million lightyears away from Earth, a star in one of the outer spiral arms went supernova, and over the past 10 days has been temporarily outshining all of the other stars in its home galaxy.
I spent the past week gathering data on it with my largest telescope and am excited about how it is turning out. The supernova is visible in my image here as the brightest star (by far) in the frame.
Amazing to witness the power of an explosion of this magnitude, visible from 21 million lightyears away with even basic amateur equipment here on Earth.
I hope you like it and have a great day!
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