On our last working days before Christmas we got an eMail from Michael Sidonio, telling us, that he has discovered a dwarf galaxy close to NGC 253.

We congratulate Michael to his discovery and we are proud that Astronomik filters were used for this image!

Please read more at IFL-Science:
http://www.iflscience.com/space/nearby-galaxy-discovered-backyard-telescope

or watch Michael Interview with "The Canberra Times":
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/former-strongman-michael-sidonio-discovers-new-galaxy-20160105-gm04iz.html

 

Finaly you may read Michael original lines below!

....
As part of a professional team lead by Aaron J. Romanowsky and David Martinez-Delgardo, this is my first involvement in a scientific discovery and my first scientific paper too.

The paper was accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society just today (dec 22th 2015) and I am pretty excited.

The paper has been in the review process for a while and under embargo until now but Subaru will do a press release, there will be a story in New Scientist shortly and it will be published by Oxford University Press soon.  

The galaxy, in this case a Dwarf Spheroidal, was first discovered in a deep image I captured of NGC 253 using my AG12and Astronomik filters. This was then subsequently followed up by deep exposures by the CHART 32 team with their 32" F7corrected Cassegrain telescope at Cerro Tololo and then finally the Suprime-Cam on the 8m Subaru telescope was used, in sub arc sec seeing, to resolve stars and confirm the discovery and galaxy classification.

So to discover something so faint and so close to such a well researched galaxy like NGC 253 is extra special and the new galaxy is called NGC 253-dw2

The last line of the abstract is very encouraging too: "We also note the continued efficacy of small telescopes for making big discoveries"

Anyway, if you are interested you can read the abstract and then download the paper (top right corner of the page under DOWNLOAD) here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03815

And you can see my deepdiscovery image here: http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/162148414/original 

Is that cool or is that cool..?

Oh and here is my latest image from Terroux Observatory using the new Deep Sky RGB and 6nm Ha and OIII filters J

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/162116083/original

Cheersand FröhlicheWeihnachten!

Michael Sidonio

www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002