Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: crimsonknight3 on 24/05/2013 20:24:58

Title: Supernova seen from UK(London) at 20:13 24th May????
Post by: crimsonknight3 on 24/05/2013 20:24:58

Hey there, today i noticed an extremely bright star sized object in the sky aprox. 272degrees west (From a town called High Wycombe) now i spend a lot of time looking at the sky day and night just with the naked eye as a hobby of sorts so i know what planes look like when reflecting the sun. Now i can't say with any certainty that this wasn't a plane however i feel that it is fairly unlikely. It's brightness was brighter than the moon on a day where you can see the moon during full daylight, in fact it was brighter than most stars i have ever seen, if not all.

That being said, has anyone else seen this bright object today or is there any astromoners who have published anything on this?

Thanks

Title: Re: Supernova seen from UK(London) at 20:13 24th May????
Post by: Bill S on 25/05/2013 23:11:23

Hi, crimsonknight3, I don't do a lot of sky-watching myself, but the most recent supernova, visible from UK, of which I am aware was the one I missed seeing early in Sept. 2011.

You must have had a lot less cloud cover in High Wycombe than we had here in Harwich yesterday to have been able to see anything up there. :)

Title: Re: Supernova seen from UK(London) at 20:13 24th May????
Post by: crimsonknight3 on 26/05/2013 22:26:10

There was a lot of cloud cover actually, just 10 mins of clear sky and the bright "thing" was up there all that time, a few mins of cloud cover and we couldn't find it again but as i said first, i am almost certain this wasn't a plane, it was too bright and too high to be a plane, also it wasn't moving. I wish it was easier for the layman to get up to date info on things like this rather than having to wait for it to be published lol

Title: Re: Supernova seen from UK(London) at 20:13 24th May????
Post by: imatfaal on 28/05/2013 17:27:14

What was the elevation - must have been pretty close to the setting sun?   Jupiter, Venus and Mercury were all in the lowish sky to the west at that time - and behind them was Orion to the left and Auriga to the right; sorry for the technical terms :-) but I get confused with anything more than left and right up and down. 

Orion has some really bright stars in the belt and capella in auriga can be very bright (I have seen it and thought it looked the brightest in the sky)

I use fourmilab mysky for these sorts of things - its free and amazing, though the interface is a bit cluncky

Title: Re: Supernova seen from UK(London) at 20:13 24th May????
Post by: David Cooper on 28/05/2013 18:31:04

Venus was my first guess, but the post at the top states "today" and has a time of 7:24pm on it, suggesting it was seen a lot earlier than that. It certainly wasn't a supernova, because anything that bright would make every news programme - normally they make it onto the news even when they're in other galaxies and aren't visible to the naked eye from here. It would be useful to know what time of day this thing was seen and how long it was observed for.