New Naked Eye Comet - 17/P Holmes

Looks like its still good under good conditions.

With a near full moon I could not even get it with the finder scope. I had to plug in the ra dec in autostar and even then I was running 2 minute subframes binned at 2x2 compared to 30 seconds 10 days ago. This is rapidly becoming an imaging only object.

First of all thank you for the compliments John Murphy, dmcdona, Dave Lillis, and i like to sent in this picture for the monthly contest, I hope i comply with the rules. Still waiting for a final shot this last few days, I think the comet just becomes more interesting because of its parabolic shape, but I agree with phoenix: i had difficulties seeing Holmes through the finder of the scoop.
And in visual, with binoculars i can see it faintly but have to move my scoop on bright background stars for an estimate position and can't see Holmes at all in the finder of my photo camera anymore so i have to take a shot and then look if i got it, then adjust my scoop again in an estimated direction etc., so it becomes a trial and error situation.
The photos i did take were almost over exposed by this blue haze of indirect moonlight, and although i can see the comet if i try to enhance the picture only a very grainy and dark comet is left.
not usable for a nice follow up. Who pulls the plug?
On the other hand I cannot complain as a first scoop owner for 2.5 months i had a very exiting time with the moon, orion and Holmes.

Henk,

If youre worried about the rules check this link if you haven't already.
www.irishastronomy.org/boards/viewtopic.php?t=3735

Heres the closest I could get Holmes to Mirfak

C80ED, RebelXT, only 4x 1min exp due to weather on Nov 21. Although the clouds did give Mirfak a nice glow!!



dave Gradwell

That's a great shot Dave!

Here's a quick shot tonight - A definite shape but no tail...

1730 this evening (28/11), in between getting home and going to the IAA meeting.



And the conventional view....

Here's an old image I took in early November.

www.astroshack.net/images/solarsys/CometHolmes.jpg

Taken with 0.4m SC Telescope at f/5 using an Apogee AP7p CCD camera.

Cropped image of Comet Holmes taken on November 7, 2007. The seeing and transparency were good which resulted in imaging dust in the tail and in the coma. The images are 30 minute LRGB total exposures were the Luminance data comes from an I or IR filter. Exposure times were:

I = 30 x 30 seconds. B, V, R = 10 x 30 seconds each filter.

Most detail are shown using IR for the Luminance than a straight full spectrum Luminance. Looking carefully, one can make out subtle detail in the image. The image combines the colour composite while using an FFT high band pass filter which brings out detail using that technique. The telescope was tracked on the comet and images were stacked on the nucleus therefore you can see some separation in the field stars. It seems that the comet is slowly turning from coming almost straight on (or away) from the observer.

Image processing with Mira Pro 7.5

Eamonn A

Kingsland Observatory MPC J62
www.kingslandobservatory.com