I’m going to do a more extended blog entry on chasing down supernovas in nearby galaxies in the near future. It will have more of an explanation on how to watch for them and proceed to get the information you need.
But, M101 is now sporting a supernova. A Type II supernova… more on those later. The magnitude was last recorded as 14.4 and rising. It was discovered a day ago. So, now’s the time to try. All the smart scopes should be able to record it. I’m going to try tonight with my eVscope since the skies have finally cleared from the forest fire soot.
So, if you can, give it a try. Use the attached finder chart from the discovery by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki. The supernova is at the tick marks. It should brighten and then dim out on a time scale of weeks or months. But in this case, M101 is ideally placed in the northern sky.
Its name is the poetic 2023ixf in case you want to look for more information on it. I will give you a bit of a tour later too of this site. This is where we can watch out for these things.
No special filters are needed since these are broad band objects. This one, in time will yield a nebula just like the Crab Nebula, M1. But you’ll have to residing be in M101 to see anything like the SN remnant we see.
Note Added 5.21.23....
Got it! Here's my shot from last night from my Bortle 9 back alley. It's clearly brighter than the discovery image.
Happy hunting and good luck!
I shot this with Vespera last night from Rockford, IL. Jpeg just cropped and sharpened a little.