One more step on the long way to complete the CG catalog here. Most of the CGs are in Puppis, which meanwhile sets quite early in the southern hemisphere night.
Lightcurve of SN 2024abfo from 17 Nov to 11 Apr 2025
Supernova SN 2024abfo‘s brightness increased steadily from our first measurement at 16.91 mag on 17 Nov 2024 until peak brightness was reached during the night 06 Dec 2024, at 13.81 mag, more than fifteenfold. Meanwhile, brightness is back at 16.73 mag on 11 Apr 2025 (all values median mag of the dataset).
Discovery by ATLAS (ATLAS-STH_ATLAS-03) on 15 Nov 2024 reported a brightness of 16.79 mag with filter “orange-ATLAS”, measurements by Pan-STARRS (PS1_GPC1) two days later on 17 Nov 2024 reported 16.63 mag with filter “i-P1”.
Our amateur measurement with 137 datasets in total now cover a period of 146 days, quite an achievement I’d say. ;-)
Due to using an L filter (Baader UV/IR cut) and not a V band filter, the measurements here overestimate the brightness by approx. 0.2 mag. With almost full moon and low altitude (meanwhile NGC 1493 is setting quite early), the last two measurement have a higher uncertainty, up to 0.08 mag.
More strange creatures: lonely cometary globule CG 7 plowing through the dust clouds of Vela, as it seems. Maybe looking for the small planetary nebula NGC 2792? (Can you find it? If not, see the annotated image below.)
M81 Bode’s Galaxy and M82 Cigar Galaxy in Ursa Major – LHaRGB v2
Old data revisited: 3 years ago, back in 2022, I collected a whopping 38 hours of data on Messier 81 and Messier 82, a nice field of view with lots of smaller galaxies for my Esprit 100ED APO at home. But I never managed to get to a satisfying rendition up until now. The new NoiseXTerminator version AI3 was released at just about the right time. Under suburban Bortle 5 skies, this massive amount of exposure time is really necessary to bring out the dust streaks.
Cometary Globules CG 3 and CG 25, Galaxy NGC 2427 in Puppis – LHaRGB v2
Continuing the hunt for cometary globules, those strangely shaped dark clouds, mostly in the constellation of Puppis. This image shows CG3 and less prominent CG25 to the right, together with the spiral galaxy NGC 2427.
CG 1 and 2 – Cometary Globules in Puppis – HaRGB v1
It took me almost a month to gather the data for this 4 panel, 2×2 mosaic of both CG 1 (lower left) and CG 2 (upper right) in the outskirts of the Gum Nebula. This processing uses RGB and Ha data only, merging L didn’t yield good results with the “red wall” on the right.
Supernova SN 2024abfo in Galaxy NGC 1493 – Dec 2024 – LHaRGB v2
The full frame around NGC 1493 with supernova SN 2024abfo, see marker, and a plethora of smaller galaxies, see the annotated version below.
This image combines RGB data from Nov, more than 12h Ha Data from Nov/Dec and L data from 01 Dec until 09 Dec 2024. Maximum brightness of the supernova was on 06 Dec 2024 at 13.81 mag (L), so this image portraits the supernova around maximum. There was actually not much signal in the Ha data, so the contribution is rather small.