Supernova in NGC 5907

Finding a supernova in another galaxy is one of the time-honored traditions for amateur astronomers: not only does it require a thorough knowledge of the sky, but you have to be able to recognize that a “star” in the field wasn’t there when you last observed the object!

With so many people using “smart” scopes to look at interesting galaxies, there’s even more of an opportunity to catch a transient event like a supernova, and especially close to the time of the initial brightening: those early detections are critical to accurate models of supernovae, and understanding the conditions that precipitated the explosive event.

Here’s the galaxy before the supernova:

NGC 5907 is an edge-on galaxy only 1.5° ENE of Messier 102. It’s fairly large and bright, which makes it easily accessible to small and moderate scopes (and especially imaging scopes).
It was discovered by William Herschel on 5 May 1788 (so observing it nows is a nice way of commemorating the 238th anniversary of its discoverey).

But the image below, taken in the last day by Sándor Szabó with his Seestar S50, shows the new supernova close to the nucleus, but clearly standing out:

Facebook post

Finding NGC 5907

(Stellarium lists this as NGC 5906 - there are many examples of “dual designations” of objects in the NGC catalog.)

The galaxy is easy to find going from M 102: it’s high declination means it’s “up” most of the night (especially this time of year).

This image shows the S50 FOV (aligned for equatorial mounts; for alt-az there will be some frame rotation present).

So - if you have a smart scope you might want to check this galaxy out.