Tracking Halley's Comet through time.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

It's amazing what you find when having a clean out.
While sorting out all my old photographic processing gear, old enlarger and black and white printing stuff etc, I came across some old pictures I'd taken of Halley's comet during it's last appearance.

I thought I wonder what date I took those so with the aid of a little modern tech in the form of my iPad mini and Sky Safari I did a plate solve of sorts, so ran time back and came up with Saturday April the 5th 1986 at approx 9:30 PM.
Amazing stuff that I thought, mind you Sky Safari didn't get it perfectly right but pretty dam close.

In the image you will see Scorpius just above the tree line and the comet above the scorpions tail in the lower part of the constellation of Norma.

For all those that were around at the time enjoy and more so for those that weren't.

[leon]

Remember it well Ken, I too did lots of B and W processing of this lovely sight.

I think from memory my shots were about March when it first appeared across the horizon and many more shots after that date.

Good find Ken, it dose bring back memories, or at least how old we are getting

Leon

Here is one around that time

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Nice one Leon,
It's amazing the images that we took back then and to look at the images we take today. The old ones are great to look at.

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Ken, I loaded the 1986-04-05 ephemeris for 1P/Halley into Starry Night Pro+ and it gives a different location to what Sky Safari will predict using the current ephemeris it has. The positions differ by about 0°37'.

If you can scan the photo you could do a full plate solve to get an exact location for the comet, from which you can work backwards to find the time.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Originally Posted by mithrandir

Ken, I loaded the 1986-04-05 ephemeris for 1P/Halley into Starry Night Pro+ and it gives a different location to what Sky Safari will predict using the current ephemeris it has. The positions differ by about 0°37'.

If you can scan the photo you could do a full plate solve to get an exact location for the comet, from which you can work backwards to find the time.

Thanks Andrew,
Yes the Sky Safari track was offset by about 1°30' to the north of the true location in my photo but the elevation was very close without going into it too much. I tried playing with different time settings but that only upset the the image with reference to my photo's horizon.
Really I was pretty happy with what I was able to arrive at.

[frenchbluehour (Nicole)]

Awesome stuff

I was 9yrs old at the time, I vividly remember being rather excited to see Halley's Comet through my Grandfather's binos ..... A great memory

[multiweb (Marc)]

Cool stuff. I remember watching it in April 86 through my 2.5" refractor one night. Just a faint smudge.

[04Stefan07 (Stefan)]

That's really cool mate. Love how you can go back in time or in the future with these programs to see what the sky looked like or will look like!

[stephenb (Stephen)]

Hi Ken,

Good work. There must be so many Halley film prints hidden away like yours, Leon's and mine.

Ken, I've taken your image (photo 1) and I've matched it to mine (photo 2). I've also added some HIP star designations and a couple of asterisms to help. Also your photo was "back to front" (I needed to flip it). Mine was taken on the 9th March, so I'll say yours was taken one day later.

I found that Halley's position in both Sky Safari and Stellarium were different.

I hope this is helpful for you.

I also have 4 B&W prints I need to identify Halley's position. I know they were taken prior to perihelion but that's about it. A lesson in recording the date and time, I guess.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Originally Posted by stephenb

Hi Ken,

Good work. There must be so many Halley film prints hidden away like yours, Leon's and mine.

Ken, I've taken your image (photo 1) and I've matched it to mine (photo 2). I've also added some HIP star designations and a couple of asterisms to help. Also your photo was "back to front" (I needed to flip it). Mine was taken on the 9th March, so I'll say yours was taken one day later.

I found that Halley's position in both Sky Safari and Stellarium were different.

I hope this is helpful for you.

I also have 4 B&W prints I need to identify Halley's position. I know they were taken prior to perihelion but that's about it. A lesson in recording the date and time, I guess.

Yeh you right there about the recording back then but something we really don't have to think about now as long as the clock in your camera and computer are correct it happens automatically for you.
Oh By the way the image you compared was actually Leons shot not mine.
Gaurantee there's a lot more out there.

[gary]

Originally Posted by Nico13

... so ran time back and came up with Saturday April the 5th 1986 at approx 9:30 PM.

Hi Ken,

Great stuff.

I know precisely where I was on April 5th 1986. In the early hours of the night, I was
sleeping in a hotel around the block from the La Belle discothèque in West Berlin
when it was bombed in a terrorist attack. That incident then precipitated the air strike by
Reagan and Thatcher on Libya.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Be...theque_bombing

And the ancients were superstitious and thought comets always foretold disaster!