Comets

[BillW]

Hi,
I finally thought I was going to get a break last night but it was still not to be!
Looked like a clear slot was coming in and it would be a chance to catch four comets in one night!

When the clouds broke I found Comet 2013R1 (Lovejoy) quite easily, even though the haze.

I didn't want to set up the scope as there was still a chance of heavy showers so just used the DSLR on the portable mount.

Got a decent enough sequence of the comet (see attached) but I noticed a slight indentation or split towards the right hand side on the coma. The image scale is very small (The scope would have been better!) so I'm not sure if it's reall or a processing artifact, maybe some background stars or just poor tracking. Looking at the red haloes the focussing could have been better. Mind you it's a 40+year old lens.

Anyway it was nice to see it for real in the binoculars.

I struggled on hoping to catch ISON, Encke and Linear but bang on cue around 04.15 the clouds rolled back in. Just got a quick glance at ISON before it was swallowed up. Not a hope of the other two.

Them are the joys of west coast living....

cheers,
Bill.

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[arp]

Hi Bill,

That's a nice pic of the comet.

Great to see that there's at least one person in the UK who actually takes his own comet photos.

It's much more hard work carting the gear outside and getting a series of pics than just tagging your name onto a pic taken by a 'scope in New Mexico or Oz. BAA and TA are now full of the latter!

Clear skies,

Alex.

[BillW]

Had another look at the comet last Sunday morning.
Certainly looks a bit bigger and brighter.
I used my 102mm refractor and the dslr to take this shot.

Put this one into grey scale and stretched to try and bring out the ion tail, unfortunately it completely washes out the coma.

I've read some reports of visual sighting of the tail but I couldn't see anything from my location. It did look distinctly greenish in the scope though.

cheers,
Bill.

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