New Naked Eye Comet - 17/P Holmes

Has anyone got a recent magnitude for the core?

Got about 5 minutes tonight between clouds - only managed to get 2 usable shots before being blanketed in cloud. This has really dimmed and is becoming a hard target naked eye as it gets closer to Perseus Alpha Mag 1.76. Canon 350D, C102SLT, 2 x 30sec @ ISO200.



The ongoing sequence (all shots are the same scale):
26th Oct

28th Oct

2nd Nov

16th Nov


The saga continues...........it's now more than 1.4 Million Kilometers across - not bad for something that started out at about 3Km across, its now the biggest object in our solar system.

Love that first shot John, it has a ghostly look to it!

Has anyone see any data on whether the 'outgassing' event has caused any deviation to the comets orbit?

Nice images John. I didnt get a chance to image during that sucke rhole last night. But what I did notice is that the naked eye brightness seems to have dimmed dramatically. At my dark sky site it was barely visible to the naked eye. Your ghostly image seems to suggest this also????


Dave Gradwell

Good sequence of images there John. You didn't mention the lens differences however... How am I supposed to learn if you don't add the lens details?