B What caused the recent supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy?

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The recent supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy has sparked interest among amateur astronomers, particularly those experimenting with imaging techniques. One participant shared their efforts to capture the galaxy, noting challenges with weather and color balance in their photos. They expressed excitement about the possibility of discovering a supernova, indicating that unusual color patterns in stars could signal its presence. Additionally, a mention of an amateur astronomer who unknowingly recorded the supernova highlights the significance of such discoveries in the field. Overall, the discussion emphasizes the blend of amateur astronomy and significant cosmic events.
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Holy cow, I've been working on imaging that galaxy while experimenting with my equipment. Weather didn't cooperate last night, bit I was planning to try again tonight. Discovering a supernova would be awesome, but I'm not sure I would notice, lol.
 
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On second thought, there's a decent chance I would have noticed. One of the issues I was working on/experimenting with is color balance/exposures. My result is below (similar orientation as the discovery photo), which has some weird color artifacts in overexposed stars. Since I was working on that and since I shot different colors on different days, I likely would have noticed an oddly colored star, showing up in red and green but not blue, for example.

M101-LRGB 2023-04-13.jpg


And here's a clip of a single subframe I just took with a different scope, with the supernova still visible/circled:

Supernova.jpg
 
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So, are you going to measure the light curve?
 
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