August 2001 <Objects in August>

	Comet Petriew (2001 Q2) The comet is moving toward the sun with its beautiful blue coma. It is an easy object in a 20cm telescope. The coma is drifting slightly westward. 04:02 August 29, 2001 60cm f/3.5 reflector ISO 800 color-negative film 9-minute exposure

	NGC 1365 and a supernova (SN 2001 du) NGC 1365 is located at declination -36 degrees, far south in the sky and not familiar to observers in Japan. This galaxy became well-known when a 14th magnitude supernova was discovered by Australia's Evans in August 2001. Compare this photo with the black-and-white photo in "Reports from Geisei Observatory".The supernova is located 90" west of the galaxy's nucleus in a spiral arm. Normally an object at this low declination will be blurred due to atmospheric instability, but this image is quite sharp thanks to good seeing. Images shown in our web pages are often magnified 20 times resulting in a degraded image quality. However, the original images are usually as sharp as this photo. In the image on the left, the center was magnified to make the supernova easier to see. 04:13 August 29, 2001 60cm f/3.5 reflector ISO 800 color-negative film 10-minute exposure