There's probably nothing more appropriate for the young students of astronomy at "Anonymus", after a lecture and documentary-watching, to go outside and observe the night sky. Saturday's evening sky, on April 17th, was marked with a beautiful crescent Moon on the western skyline.
We felt compelled to capture it with our Canon, with Denis in the leading role: Canon EOS 300D, Celestron C8, f/3.6 focus reductor- 10 frames po 1/6 s, ISO 100.
Despite the light pollution, The Moon keeps causing excitement and awe evertime it shows up in the evening sky. Often underestimated because it is always present and continuous, but early in the evening, an hour after sunset, there is hardly a better sight.
The news of the discovery of the supernovae has been published on Zvjezdarnica.com, Croatia's leading web portal on astronomy.
What are supernovae? Supernovae are one of the most energetic and powerful explosions in the universe. They can sometimes be brighter that a whole galaxy in which they are situated! Supernovae last relatively short, appearing visible for only a couple of weeks or months. By discovering supernovea we help answer some of the cosmologists' greatest questions on matery, the beginning and the end of our universe. In average, however, supernovae tend to appear every 100 years in a galaxy the size of our Milky Way.
So how do we find even more supernovae? We need to look into different galaxies. A lot of different galaxies.
It was Sunday evening when I received the sms from Filip (Novoselnik): "We've got it!". I almost fell out of my chair. Within a couple of minutes everyone of us was online searching form someone to confirm the finding. The clouds weren't favourble to us, so Rainer contacted Catalina to check the finding in their own archive -answer A. Drake's still wandering in our minds: "Yes, we captured it too, but our software failed to detect it. Congratulations on the discovery!" A few days later we were watching the IAU list of supernovae, which now had our own: SN 2010AX.
I can barely find the words to describe the feeling of watching the list; alongside projects like Catalina's Sky Survey, PanSTARRSa, LOSS i CHASE there were now our names (which btw are 2 highschool students, 1 graduate studente and a few others from astronomy club "Anonymus", along with myself and the Observatory La Sagra in Spain.
Team members are: F. Novoselnik, D. Vida, R. Gregić, I. Skokić (AD Anonymus) and S. Sanchez, J. Nomen, R. Stoss, B. Yeung, J. Rodriguez, M. Hurtado (LSSS). Amazing. Congratulations to the team and everyone involved!
Ima nešto u tome kad prvi puta pogledate kroz teleskop i raširenih očiju uzviknete "Kako je dobar Mjesec!" Vjerojatno se sjećate i sami. Upravo to smo omogućili danas djeci Belišća i okolnih sela (njih 80 otprilike), koji su dovukli roditelje za rukav i gledali zajedno Mjesec i Mars.
Unatoč maglovitom nebu (koje je 1h nakon kristalno čisto naravno, kad smo otišli), bilo je super i sbvi su bili oduševljeni. osobito Gosp. Glasovac koji je ponudio skorašnje suradnje oko predavanja koja će se održavati u Belišću. Dobro je i rekao, teško je ovdje bilio što pokrenuti, a ovo ga je oduševilo i iznenadilo posjećenošću.
This is my second visit to the Visnjan's School of Astronomy (VSA), and Filip's third. VSA took place between August 15 - 25, this year. We arrived in Visnjan a day before it started, and resided in the dormitorium, where we later worked and slept.
This year, there were 5 groups of students, one os assembeling the remote telescope on Tican's observatory, the second studied variable stars, the third dealt with electrophonic sounds and ultra-low frequencies of electromagnetic waves, and the group we were in studied meteors and their activities...The Report following is in Croatian.
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