Megan's Blog

More stuff in M51

The weather has been particularly good over the last few days so last night, Tony and I took the opportunity to use the telescope on the roof of the physics department and photographed M51. The results don't look too spectacular, largely because the image has not had the effects of the telescope optics removed, a process known as flat-fielding. The doughnut-shaped patterns you can see in the image are caused by particles of dust in the optics.

Then, earlier today, Rob told me that there had been an X-ray flash in the same galaxy. It is probably not associated with the supernova, but it's interesting all the same.