Overview
Discovered two days before this photo was taken, this nova is white dwarf star 5500 light-years from Earth that, due to the immense force of gravity, pulled in material from a nearby companion star. This ignited a thermonuclear explosion on the white dwarf’s surface, the light from which has just reached us.
Background
The night sky may seem eternal and never-changing, but ask any Ancient Greek and they’d tell you that’s not the case. In March 2021 a nova star was detected, and word quickly spread around the astronomical community. It was fairly bright, especially so soon after being detected, so well within my the limits of my telescope and camera. The weather was fairly grotty but there was a short enough break in the clouds to quickly gather some subs. It took a bit of work and staring at star charts to actually identify the nova within the initial wide field of view — check out the example data below and you’ll see what I mean!
Imaging details
| Date | 20 March 2021 |
| Location | Bristol, UK (Bortle 8) |
| Telescope | Askar FRA400 f/5.6 Quintuplet APO Astrograph |
| Camera | ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO |
| Mount | Orion Sirius EQ-G |
| Guide | William Optics 32mm; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini |
| Control | ASIAIR |
| Software | PixInsight, Lightroom |
| Filters | No filter: 15 x 120 seconds |
| Total exposure time | 30 minutes |
| Image credit | Lee Pullen |
Source data
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