Comet Panstarrs naked eye

[Tamtarn]

Just been able to see Comet Panstarrs naked eye from our backyard.
Absolutely amazing.
Now watching through 15x70 binos what a thrill! :thumbsup:
Barb

[omegacrux]

Same could see it naked eye and with 10x32 bino's
So couldn't help myself got out the 10in Dob looked great .
Two comets in one night how good is that !

David

[anthony.tony]

Hello did the same last night On a painters Stepladder To clear trees from my Backyard-Could see it naked eye with some tail- Looked Stunning in my Vien 80mm Bino's -Tony

[MortonH]

Alas, seems I'm destined not to see Panstarrs. Looks cloudy till the end of the week and by then it'll be too close to the sun. :(

[ving]

in sydney its shrouded by the great cloud nebula... :(

[mithrandir]

Going by recent Sydney weather, we should either sell all the astro gear, or move.

[JetDragon]

What is the best tim (EST) to see PANSTARRS? We have a break in the clouds to the SW here on the Central Coast at the moment - hoping there might be a chance tonight!!!!

[Tamtarn]

Dave, we started searching about 8pm last night the best view was 8.30-9pm, the sky was darkening enough to see it naked eye.
If you have binos you should see it quite easily.
Barb

[JetDragon]

Thanks Barb - still reasonably clear here at 7.15 so I have my fingers crossed

cheers

Dave

[Jen]

:D yes me tooooooo :thumbsup::thumbsup: so i took a few happy snaps the tail on this one is so beautiful :D

[swannies1983]

Add me to the list who have seen it naked eye. Got a nice glimpse of it here in Adelaide tonight.

[Yaar]

Thank you for all the reports. They make me wait eagerly for the evening sightings of the comet from up north. The daytime skies here in Karachi have been a beautiful crisp blue and the night time skies wonderfully transparent since February's last week.

Haven't been able to edit the ssystim.ini file within the <Documents&settings\<username>\application data\stellarium\data> folder of Stellarium because the parent folder is locked and I cannot open it, so not exactly sure when PanSTARRS would first appear above the horizon at dusk from my city (24.9 N). Anyway I hope the excellent skies all the way to the horizon continue to be around.

I have a cross-country flight scheduled for the 10th around dusk ;) Trying to secure a left window side seat on that 747, because it would be facing west.

I've already seen the Milky Way, Omega Centauri and a meteor from an airplane window: http://dawn.com/2013/02/16/is-it-a-plane-is-it-a-ufo-no-it-is-the-iss/ Comet PanSTARRS would be a very nice addition to the list. Let's see how it goes.

[gbeal]

Yes, a nice sight, and I am convinced I saw Lemmon naked eye as well last night, Imaged both, a night to remember.
Gary

[PS19.1]

Anyone got any maps to locate Panstarrs and Lemmon over the next few days.
Greg

[mithrandir]

According to CdC, PANSTARRS should be visible in Karachi from around the end of March, and circumpolar by late April.

If you can't update your ssystem.ini, why not try CdC (http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/start)?

[mithrandir]

This is for latitudes around Sydney for 20:00 with DST (or 19:00 for WA). It should be reasonably close for Adelaide and Perth, but they will be higher for Vic and Tas.

[PS19.1]

thanks Andrew.

[MortonH]

I just saw it between the clouds from my balcony!!! Even in the light pollution over western Sydney it was so easy in 7x50 binos and I think I could just make it out naked eye. Took a few snaps on a fixed tripod then ran back inside to get my small scope but the clouds had come in. Think that's it for the night.

It is a really nice looking comet. The northerners are in for a treat soon.

[Tinderboxsky]

The persistent clouds cleared tonight in southern Tasmania to provide a clear warm night with good seeing and transparency.

Panstarrs was visible in 7X50 binos at 8.30 pm in the twilight and easily naked eye visible from 8.50 pm. It provided quite a sight as the comet and tail slowly decended towards and finally disappeared behind trees on a ridge approx 10 kilometers away at 9.20 pm.

Comet Lemon was also an easy target with some faint possible naked eye glimpses, though not enough for me to claim a naked eye sighting.

My first time for two comets in the one night - very pleasing.

Steve

[JetDragon]

At last - the cloud cleared last evening on the Central Coast just long enough (about 15 mins) to get a nice look at Panstarrs - initially through my 20x60 binos but as the sky got darker with the naked eye too - fantastic.

Had a look through the 70mm refractor too - but for me the best view was with the binos

cheers
Dave

[swannies1983]

Went down the beach last night and had a great view of it. Arrived at around 8.30 and I thought I had missed it because I couldn't see it. After several frantic minutes sweeping the area where I thought it would be, I eventually saw a fuzzy patch. Started imaging at around 8.40 until just after 9. I reckon it was best visually around 8.50 before getting amongst the murkiness of the horizon.

[Yaar]

Thank you Andrew. I had tried CdC a couple of years ago. An observing buddy and a senior member of our club is a die-hard fan of it. But Stellarium's GUI is quite addictive :) Will give CdC a shot again sometime.

Thanks to Dan in Indiana, I just learned that we no longer have to add orbital elements manually. You can go to the Configuration Window in Stellarium, then Plugins, Solar System Editor, Solar System and Add new solar system objects. From the configuration window I could also replace the old ssystem.ini file with the new one having the elements of ISON and PanSTARRS, and it is working.

Clear skies to us all.

[Terry B]

It has mostly cleared here in the Northern Tablelands tonight with only some clouds in th east.
I went looking for comet panstarrs about 2015 and found it very low on the horizon. It was visible naked eye only about 10deg above the horizon. With small binos I could easily make out a tail.
I couldn't see a tail naked eye but it did appear "fuzzy" with averted vision.
I didn't bother trying to photograph it as it is cold and blowing a gale.
Cheers

Terry

[Barrykgerdes]

I modified my Comet finder program to arrange the orbital elements from the data base and write a stellarium insert. Data base has all the comets listed on the MPC site. I wrote a similar program that finds a number of asteroids and also writes an entry for the stellarium ssystem.ini. A third program can generate orbital parameters from three sightings of a comet or asteroid and also write an entry for the stellarium ssystem.ini file.

The programs are are all written and compiled in QB64 a version of Quickbasic that will run on 64bit platforms from "Astronomy with your personal computer by Peter Duffet-Smith"

Barry

[seeker372011]

Sighted but only with binocs; by the time it got darker lost it behind low cloud on the horizon.

From Winston Hills, Western Sydney, Buckleys Road

[Paul Haese]

Seen it naked eye from Millicent and now from Adelaide on Windy Point. Quite bright but still around mag 4 in my estimation. I have read accounts of being mag 2 but I doubt this as it is just visible to the naked eye and tail ever so faintly visible.

[Rob_K]

Saw it again tonight - first picked it up in binoculars at 8:15pm in blue sky, and it was faintly visible naked-eye at that stage, with very faint tail. Got better & better - ran around to a mate's place to get him to have a look and ended up with a fair crowd! No-one had any trouble spotting it naked eye and seeing the tail by that stage, even kids (or maybe I should say 'even adults'?) - the sky was still so light that there were no stars visible within cooee of it so it was very easy to point out.

One young boy asked me how far away it was - when I told him it was getting fairly close to the Sun now he seemed most surprised. I think he thought it was something in our atmosphere! Binocular views were great, the small inner coma (false nucleus) is so intense.

As the comet moves sunward we're getting a better view of it from here as it is setting against lower & lower hills. But hills are hills and we can't see it down into the horizon unfortunately, maybe to somewhere round 5-6 degrees tonight. Kept imagining what it would look like in a dark sky!

After PANSTARRS had set & the sky had darkened I had a look at C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) through binoculars - nice, but unfortunately it has now moved into town skyglow from our end of town and there is no chance of a naked-eye sighting.

Attached is an image I took last night of the comet head, using a NexImage webcam through a 4.5" f8 reflector. The width of the frame is 14 arcminutes. I could imagine some of the planetary imagers on IIS getting cracker shots of the head, not that there's much time left!

Cheers -

[Russ59]

Can someone offer some suggestions for some The best way to capture using a DSLR. I've never attempted something so close to sunset. I initially thought of multiple exposures and stack in DSS but what exposure time?

Russ

[Wavytone]

You want a fast lens - ideally shoot at f/2 to f/4, ISO 800-1600, for 10-30 secs depending on the focal length of your lens.

I'm using a compact tonight Oanasonic LX5 and expecting to capture both comets in 1 frame using ISO400, 1 minute at f/2 with a wide angle lens (the lens is a Leica Summilux)

[Larryp]

Finally got to see it tonight in my 7x50s. Nucleus very bright and tail prominent even in twilight. It's a beautiful comet!

[andyc]

Hi Paul, interested you think it's as faint as near mag 4? It's clearly naked-eye low in the twilight from my Melbourne location - I don't think I could see mag 4 stars that low in that direction even in full darkness looking west over the city! That deep in twilight, to me, it must be rather brighter. In reference to Deneb Kaitos (Beta Ceti, mag 2.0), which is a bit higher in the twilight, I'd say it was definitely fainter than that star, but within a magnitude in brightness. Can't see it being fainter than 3 at the moment. But of course I may be wrong, and regardless it's a very pretty thing in the evening sky! A treat in the big binoculars too with a degree of tail. Hope you and everyone else has clear skies to see it before it heads north.

[doppler]

Finally the clouds cleared first time in weeks here in Mackay. My daughter got this pic with her 1100d canon ... single 10 seconds at iso 6400 f5 165mm. at 7.33 pm est. I think that is a shooting star at the top(its not in the image before or after). Just visible to the naked eye but quite bright in the 12 x 60 binoculars.