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2005 Jan
04.46 Two
panel mosiac, each panel consisting of 10 x 60 sec exposures. Resampled
to 50%. FOV ~ 5 x 3 degrees, N at top.
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2004 Dec
28.45 19 x 60
sec. Note the faster motion (longer trails) than the prevous
night. The gaps in the trails are caused by omitting images that
contained satellite trails (15 of the original 29 images were polluted
by such trails!)
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2004 Dec
27.45 16 x 60
sec. Most images were taken with a 99% sunlit moon above the
horizon but behind a cloud. Same configuration as the night before.
Note the streamers in the ion tail and the change in P.A. of the
anti-tail.
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2004 Dec
26.45 16 x 60 sec in
bright moonlight (100% sunlit moon, 40 degrees away). 200mm f/2.8
Nikon telephoto + ST8-XE. FOV cropped to approx 2.5 x 2.5 degrees
and resampled to 67% of original, N at top. Stars are a bit bloated
becasue the optics didn't have enough time to cool down. Clouds were
moving in so I decided to start imgaing anyway. Note the bright
anti-tail at 4 o'clock.
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2004 Nov
22.57
10 x 60sec taken in bright moonlight (85% sunlit moon 70 degrees away).
200mm f/2.8 Nikon telephoto + ST8-XE. FOV is approx
3 x 2 degrees with N at left.
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2004 May
27.78 Prediscovery image taken 3
months before discovery. This image was taken 45 minutes before
twilight started, low in the morning sky at an altitude of 23
degrees. The comet is the nebulous object in the centre of the
small light blue rectangle. A second image of this field
taken on the same morning confirms that it is not an artifact.
Unfortunately the comet is close to a field star making photometry
difficult. The images are undersampled, with a FWHM of 1.6 pix. Using
an aperture radius of 2.5 pixels and fitting 71 Tycho stars with
0.0 < B-V < 0.8, I find V=12.2 for the combined flux of the
nearest field star and comet.
Using multiple R and B magnitudes for the star taken from GSC2.2 and
USNO-B1, I estitmate Vstar = 13.3 and therefore Vcomet = 12.7 (+/- 0.5)
Right: Red light image (AAO DSS2) from
Aladin showing a deep image of same field covered by the central
light blue rectangle above. The pink cross marks the location of the
comet. |
