Supernova - SN2011by

Supernova SN2011by was discovered by Zhangwei Jin, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, and Xing Gao, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China on April 26, 2011. It was spotted in the galaxy NGC 3972 in the constellation Ursa Major near the star Phad. The coordinates for the galaxy and the supernova are RA 11h55m and Dec +55. From what I'm gathering through looking at pictures and what I've read it started as a magnitude 14.2 and is now around 13.1-13.5 and still increasing in brightness. It was discovered using a Celestron C14 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a unfiltered CCD camera at Mt. Nanshan. Nothing was visible down to a magnitude 19.5 in this area on images taken by Zhangwei Jin and Xing Gao on April 8 and 10, or on a digitized sky survey image from May 7, 1991.



Image from this link here.

I can't tell you how bright it will get or even how long it will be visible, but I can tell you if you have a telescope of 8” or larger you should be able to catch a glimpse of it, but it may be a challenge. It may look like a star right around the top or bottom (depending if your view is flipped or not) center of galaxy NGC 3972.

Thanks to star maps and astronomers around the world we are able to tell it's not just another star in the sky, it's a new supernova. The thing that I can't stop thinking about whenever I hear about SN2011by is that this may be new to us in our skies but this happened quite some time ago. According to NED the distance is somewhere around 46 million light-years away!

Searching around I can't find much information about this supernova that I didn't already mention above. If you happen to find it in your telescope or you happen to image it through your telescope please share in the comments below. Would love to hear your reports on it, or see your pictures.