I was clouded out this morning, i set up last night at 11pm then slept in the car, made visual obs of the comet at 3:20am then cloud ruined the rest of the morning!
Nice shots Mike, I can just make out the ion trail! Still cloudy/rainy here, and I haven't had a chance to observe it since it re-appeared in our morning skies...
More shots from this morning..
Finally this morning I got everything right to image Comet Boattini - no jpegs, no moon distractions and I was up early enough to start imaging it while it was low down.
Here are two images from the same data set, stacked differently (one add, one median).
12x 3 minute exposures @ ISO800, ICNR, flats calibrated. Shot using my Canon 350D, ED80, guided using a DMK.
I was very happy to see the ion tail reveal itself during processing.
Am I to understand that we won't have Boattini in the southern skies for much longer, and if so, where and when do I look for it before it does dissapear?
Am I to understand that we won't have Boattini in the southern skies for much longer, and if so, where and when do I look for it before it does dissapear?
Couldn't see a thing. Well, not Boattini anyway. I was scanning around nearby when I found a fuzzy patch, put the binoculars down to find it was in Orion. Back inside later to look it up and found it was m43/m42. Don't know enough about them to say what it is etc, but you know I'm going to find out as soon as I can drag myself out of bed again in the wee hours and get the dob outside. Ha, I love my new hobby.
Hi Glen, i haven't seen the tail visually as i'm using my 7x50 bins for all my obs. I hope to be taking out my 10" dob in the morning, i might be able to see something then. I took pics this morning which still showed signs of a tail, but the comet is fading.
I made the comet out at mag 4.9, dia= 20', DC= 5.
Was the central condensation have a stellar like point of light in the coma with the 12"? (Pseudo nucleus?)
Boattini's visual tail is at least 40' long and might be 60' in length. I looked at it with a 12" Dob this morning and a 13mm Hyperion EP (115x) which has a 40' field. The tail is best seen if you rock your scope back and forth across it. Look in the 4 o'clock position.
Tried finding it with the binos this morning at 5am but not knowing its position I couldn`t find it, could have still been behind trees here...
Too darn windy to try to image it....and its a cold wind too!
Anyone have a link to recent finder chart/ co-ordinates.
cheers Gary
Nice and clear this morning here! with only one long cloud across the sky and you can guess where it sat...right over the comet. Had to wait 1/2hr before the comet was visible. Could see it easily with the 10x50s thou I couldn`t see the ion tail. I reckon it would be mag 5 or slightly dimmer.
Setup the scope and managed 11 shots at 200 seconds before the sky became too bright. Seeing was very poor but very transparent.
Here is a approx 70% crop from one frame, totally unprocessed and no dark frame subtracted..Shall look nice when I combine them all..
cheers Gary
They look pretty good!
Vincent
