Supernova SN 2016adj in the peculiar galaxy NGC 5128 (“Centaurus A”) – 9 Feb. 2016
On 8.5 Feb. 2016, Peter Marples and Greg Bock reported their discovery of a possible supernova in the stunning, peculiar galaxy NGC 5128, also well-known as “Centaurus A“. Spectroscopy showed the transient was a genuine, type II supernova, now designed SN 2016adj.
The image above was obtained by Gianluca Masi, Virtual Telescope Project, remotely using a 0.7m-f/6.6 telescope in Australia. Supernova 2016adj is marked with black lines in the bottom left insert. It is close to a brightest star and its brightness was estimated at mag. 15.2 (unfiltered, R mags for the reference stars from UCAC-4).
NGC 5128 is truly important galaxy at about 15 millions of light years from us and it is a strong radio waves source, hence the name “Centaurus A”, being the nearest radio galaxy, belonging to the group of Messier 83.
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Wow
Wow!, we have 20 images of this galaxy in R, V and B filters each, taken on 26 january for RGB composite for educational and outreach project at our observatory, best regards. Santiago Roland IAU Code 844 – Los Molinos, Uruguay.