Supernova 2014bv Fading

The supernova 2014bv is fading, but still very bright and worthy of observations.

It is located in NGC 4386.

Here are two images, the first from earlier this month, followed by a more recent one taken a few hours ago.

 

NGC 6564

Look at NGC 6564 and what do you see?

Not much

Maybe there is a double star - maybe not.

Here is the thing with 6564:  It was discovered by Albert Marth in 1864.  Marth was a 19th Century German astronomer who went to England in 1853 and worked for a fellow named George Bishop - Bishop was a wealth wine merchant who was a patron of astronomy and gave Marth funding so that the astronomer could be free to pursue his interests.  At that time it was rare that a person would be paid to be an astronomer.  He made extensive calculations of transits of various planets FROM other planets.  He predicted transits of Earth as seen from Mars.  Imagine - he was working as if we might be able to see Earth from Mars 

Now about NGC 6564.  We are not quite sure what Marth saw.  One source says, "NGC 6564 is probably a triple star 1.5 seconds preceding and 1.5 arcmin south of Marth's position. There is no galaxy near that he might have seen, and the triple would probably match his view of it with Lassell's 48-inch. Marth found two other galaxies the same night (N6375 and N6379); the mean offset of their positions from Marth's is in the same direction and about the same size (1 second of time and 1 arcmin) as those for the triple. All in all, this amounts only to circumstantial evidence, but it is the best we can do at the moment. - Dr. Harold G. Corwin, Jr."

NGC 6636

NGC 6636 is an interesting galaxy - in part for it's apparent proximity to a different galaxy.

First, about NGC 6636 - It is located in Draco and was discovered in 1836 by Lewis Swift.  I find the structure interesting.  Take a look at the center - there is the galactic core, but also two other similarly bright areas near the center - a clumping of light sources.  It has a nice apparent size and shape that is pleasing to the eye.  

But there is that star that looks like it might be  a supernova candidate - the kind that makes you google other images to be sure it has been there for a while.  It has - but it is not a star.  That is actually another galaxy. MCG+11-22-047.  Simbad says it is a Seyfert Galaxy.

Seyfert galaxies have quasar-like nuclei - meaning they are very luminous, distant and bright but unlike quasars, we can clearly see their host galaxies (although with Slooh.com it just looks star-like).

The galaxies get their name from Carl Seyfert, who first described their type in 1943.

The star like galaxy is in the upper left of the core, just on the edge of the upper spiral.