A different Comet- 46P Wirtanen

[Terry B]

Dear All
I noted in Skymap another comet currently in Piscis Austrinus. Skymap gives a mag of 11.8 so I thought I would try to look at it. Through the eyepiece there was absolutely nothing. Using my CCD with a luminescence filter and 2 min exposure there was nothing!
I removed the lum filter and tried unfiltered and could see a faint blob.
The attached image is a stack of 9 x 2 min unfiltered images through my VC200l with a genesis CCD. I had to stack on the stars as I couldn't determine a centre point og the comet to stack on the comet. I have labelled the mag of 2 nearby stars. These mags are GSC mags so may be off by up to 1 mag on my unfiltered images. Even so the comet is pretty dim. No where near mag 11.8. I would have thought closer to mag ~17.
At least I got an image.

[tornado33]

Gee it sure is faint. What makes it even harder is that it looks to have moved during the exposure. Well done imaging it.
Scott

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Yep P46 is one of those comets that dont shed alot of dust so it makes it difficult to stand out.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...97&postcount=1

Took this from Snake Valley on Saturday night.

[iceman (Mike)]

Wow that is really faint! Well done grabbing it, Terry!

[Terry B]

Originally Posted by tornado33

Gee it sure is faint. What makes it even harder is that it looks to have moved during the exposure. Well done imaging it.
Scott

It did move a little bit. That is why I only did 120sec exposures. It was too dim for me to stack the comet rather than on the stars.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

fantastic effort Terry.