SN 2014J in colour

Last week, UCL students along with their lecturer, Dr Steve Fossey, discovered one of the closest and brightest supernovae in recent decades.

Their image, taken at the University of London Observatory (UCL's teaching observatory in North London), showed a bright spot of light on a greyscale image of the galaxy M 82, which was taken through a red filter.

In the following days, Fossey and his colleagues have made additional observations using different coloured filters, allowing them to make a colour composite of the galaxy with its supernova, which is catalogued as SN 2014J.

In this closeup, the arrow points out the location of the supernova, which was caused by an unstable white dwarf star pulling material of a larger neighbour until it exploded.

Photo credit: UCL/University of London Observatory/Steve Fossey/Ian Howarth/Ben Cooke/Guy Pollack/Matthew Wilde/Thomas Wright

Links

• UCL Physics & Astronomy
• University of London Observatory

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This image can be reproduced freely providing the source is credited