ZTF, the "Green Comet"

By the end of 2022 it was scheduled to be spectacular, with a potential of being visible to the naked eye in February, but it didn't... Nevertheless, comet ZTF (C/2022-E3), named after its "discoverer" (Zwicky Transient Facility), is an interesting object, since it is returning supposedly for the first time in some 50,000 years ! Indeed it must have witnessed some great changes in our civilisation...

We could observe it wandering from Gemini to Taurus, still shining at a magnitude of 6.4, that is just under the limit of visibility for human eye.
The picture below shows the bright, extended coma (left side) followed by the flared, irregularly shaped dust tail (right side). The green color of the coma, rather common on comets, is due to the presence of diatomic carbon (C2), while the brownish (reddish?) tint of the tail is produced by the usual interaction of sunshine with dust.

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, ISO 3200, total exposure 10 minutes.

A pair of distant stellar explosions, both bright enough for visual telescopes...

Supernovae are quite rare in a given galaxy, but astronomers use to detect hundreds of them every year, by surveying a large sample of galaxies. Below are two of them, detected almost simultaneously.

The first one, labelled SN2023axu, is located not far in the sky from Sirius, the brightest star. We captured it when shining at a reasonable magnitude of 14.6, within the outskirts of the tiny galaxy NGC2283 (CMa), distant of some 33 million light-years.
To identify the supernova among the stars, you may need some help from the bottom picture, where it is marked by the two lines...

The other one, labelled SN2023bee, shown up in a more distant galaxy, NGC2708 (Hya), located some 85 million light-years away. Even so, at a magnitude of 13.4, it looks much brighter than "axu", hence evidencing a much more powerful stellar explosion... Hereafter we display a picture that we took near its maximum magnitude, followed by the marked view to identify the supernova :

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February 24th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, ISO 4000, total exposure 14 minutes. North is up.

A private event at the observatory / edition 2023

After a hiatus due to the pandemic, we get back to the tradition of taking a picture of the sunset right behind the domes of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO), allowed by a very precise alignment between the Sun, the CTIO, and our own observatory.

This "private event", visible exclusively from our observing room, happens twice a year (on November and February) : here are some views of the last February 8th event which, for the first time in years, displays some nice sunspots on the solar surface...

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February 8th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor f/5.3