Comet Pan-Starrs C/2016 M1

[Placidus]

We looked in the Solar System forum, and saw squillions of pics of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, tiny blindingly bright things, using lucky imaging and video cameras, and felt all alone and cold.

Photographing a very distant comet is more what we do in the deep space section, in that exposures are longer than a tenth of a second.

A single 5 minute exposure*. Aspen CG16M on 20 inch PlaneWave.

The angular diameter of the comet is about 2.4 min arc. We guided on the stars, not the comet nucleus, as it was too faint to guide on.

On the original image (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Solar-system/i-Lfw3ZCc/0/eb7d57c9/O/Panstarrs%20C2016%20M1.jpg), during that 5 minutes, the core of the comet moved about 11 pixels, or 6 seconds of arc, relative to the stars. At a distance (according to The Sky Live) (https://theskylive.com/c2016m1-tracker) of about 232 million km (5 times further than Mars right now, and 40% of the way to Jupiter), that's a guestimated tangential distance of 6820 Km, or a velocity of about 23 Km/sec. It's actual speed, including any radial component, is 36 Km/sec**. Good, but no cigar.


*Earlier I wrote 7 min. That was wrong. We never do 7 minute exposures at home.

** ¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

[cometcatcher]

Nice M&T. It's just a dot in my scope now.

[Placidus]

Thanks, Kevin.

We saw your image, and H0ughy's, and were inspired to have a peek.

Best,
MnT

[h0ughy]

nice fuzzball - well done

[Atmos]

That’s pretty neat MnT :thumbsup:

[kosborn]

Very nice. I have focal length envy and aperture envy. I tried the same target with my little refractor a couple of weeks ago and decided to leave the result hidden and buried on my hard drive. Maybe I will temporarily exhume it, let it see the light of day and then bury it again... Lots of artefact from my first attempt at comet align in PixInsight. Not a patch on yours.

Kevin

[Placidus]

Thanks h0ughy. You were our initial inspiration.




:)



Thanks, Kevin. Your image is good! Definitely registered on the comet.

One of us remembers back in 1986 or so seeing Halley's Comet through binoculars, and being bitterly disappointed. They'd broken their solemn word. There's Guvamints for you. Your shot is far better!

The night we did the comet, we had guests over, were struggling with a lower shutter limit microswitch that didn't want to work, and a main target coming into sight, so we didn't do colour. In retrospect, a couple hours on the comet would have been a far better investment of time.

[atalas]

Very cool M&T:thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Thanks, Louie!

[multiweb]

Well done! :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Cheers, Marc :)

[RickS]

Nice result for a single sub, M&T!