NGC 5139 – Omega Centauri Globular Cluster – OSC v1
And one more. ;-) Of course, Omega Centauri aka NGC 5139 is a jewel in the southern sky and a go-to-target. So Omega Centauri’s photons were the “first light” for the ASI 2600 MC Duo on the AK3 astrograph, but I messed up focussing and had to redo it later.
All three globular clusters here in the blog were processed in PixInsight and Lightroom with the same color calibration and processing steps. Interestingly enough, their appearance varies quite a bit!
Messier 62 – Flickering Globular Cluster in Ophiuchus – OSC v2
Another globular cluster, only about 9 degrees from M4 towards the constellation Ophiuchus, Messier 62 or NGC 6266 against the dense background star field of the Milky Way.
Notable change to my previously shown OSC workflow: I used “K2V star” as the white reference for SpectrophotometricColorCalibration. Standard “Average spiral galaxy” yielded stars, which were too “golden” for my taste, thus this bluer/colder rendition.
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.)
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.
