Jedolby

A couple of nights ago, I found a supernova in galaxy NGC 7331, also known as the "Deer Lick Galaxy." It was the final image I took on the night of August 8, 2025. But I didn't notice the supernova. I didn't see any new stars in the vicinity of the galaxy, and I proceeded to shut down my telescope and camera for the night. But as I downloaded the night's worth of images from my imaging laptop (that's attached to my telescope tripod with double-stick tape), I decided to adjust the contrast and brightness of my image of NGC 7331 and see if a supernova might be lurking in the bright nucleus of the galaxy. To my great surprise, there was, indeed, a supernova in hiding! In the old days, when we astrophotographers used emulsion films to take pictures of celestial objects, we routinely overexposed the cores of galaxies in order to reveal their fainter spiral arms. We considered the washout of the galactic core to be an acceptable loss in order to gain views of faint...

I'll bet if we could poll thousands of backyard astronomers, we'd find that a large percentage of them would claim owls as their friends. I fell for that notion years ago, but I'm over it now. Make no mistake, owls don't give a hoot about backyard astronomers! But when we're out there night after night, listening to the owls hooting at each other, it is very tempting to believe that they're curious about us and that they're trying to communicate with us. Backyard astronomy is a lonely hobby, and we welcome even the companionship of the animal kingdom. I must admit that of all the wild animal calls, a hooting owl is one of the most soothing, non-threatening sounds to hear nearby in the darkness. I, too, like to think that they're reaching out to me for companionship. One night in 2020, as I was outside going through the process of shutting down my astronomical observations, an owl was perched on a nearby power-line pole. For several minutes, the owl was h...