Lovely shot Steve!

A very interesting shot Steve, where you able to clearly see this outer halo as easy as the pic might indicate?

Steve,
your shot almost looks like a sci-fi painting! Really neat effects in there. How did you do the twinkle effect?

Thanks lads

The comet had a noticable halo from where I was viewing, however atmospherics may have had an influence. I pushed up the levels and saturation to see if any evidence of a tail was there, and to reveal any fainter detail.

Seanie, the twinkles were put in for effect, and in hindsight there is probably too much, so I have taken alot of them out in a later version of the processing (fresh eyes!! )

Last nights effort

Wow! Look how it has changed!

Holy freaky comets Batman !! :shock:
its like something out of startrek !
Cant wait to see it again this week as the weather gets better. !

Kieran,

I think thats the best shot I've seen yet on these boards and others. Well Done

I have yet to see any input globally from any of the pro's. Is there any scientific evidence yet as to what is causing this or is it all still speculation (good speculation but still some hard data would be nice) :?:

Kieran,

I think thats the best shot I've seen yet on these boards and others. Well Done

I echo those sentiments. It looks like you have caught a shockwave phenomenon of some kind there. The bubble makes it seem this comet has hardly travelled at all!

I have yet to see any input globally from any of the pro's.

John ... have a look at the Comet Mailing List where you will find a fair few messages from the likes of comet guru John Bortle. John used to write a Comet Digest column in Sky and Telescope a number of years ago but they dropped it. He is an expert on comets although an amateur astronomer.

List is at tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/comets-ml/

John,

Thanks for that but still no hard data. What I'm looking for is mass estimations, mass loss due to the outgassing (it must be fantastic), reasons for the outgassing, any change in orbit caused by the outgassing and loss of mass. I have seen precious little hard data (read none) on this yet and it makes you wonder what kind of an event is needed to get wheels in motion. Nasa was supposed to be organising a Hubble viewing of this event last night but there is still no information on their site (that I could find). Maybe someone in Armagh could enlighten us as to what is going on, I know Mark Bailey was (is) a comet enthusiast (certainly an Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt enthusiast).

Mark - if your monitoring these boards - can you shed any enlightenment in our direction - Please, it really would be much appreciated.

Back to speculation - I believe there is a tail to be seen, only its currently pointed away from us and may become more apparent as earths attitude to it changes, if only it lasts a couple more weeks or so. I believe there was a second outburst during the 1892 event that kept the comet visible for longer and maybe that will happen again (wishful thinking). Anyway as its cloudy and Metcheck is not forecasting kinder skies over the coming days we may be left indoors speculating rather than being productive at the eypiece/camera.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, QUB, is on the case...

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7070108.stm

More on this here....

star.pst.qub.ac.uk/news/

And here's one of those marvellous "Earth to scale" photos that I so love

star.pst.qub.ac.uk/news/holmes2.jpg

Thanks Paul, but there is still no detail in any reports.

Have you looked yet tonight. I've been out with the bins dodging fireworks, and it looks much bigger and more diffuse tonight - its absolutely enormous (technical terms). I reckon a tail is becoming apparent to the right. Though light cloud and fireworks make it hard to discern in the binos. I'll get the scope out later if the night clears and try to get some more photos.

just managed a brief look at 50X in the 8" tonight before cloud rolled in. It definitely seems more difuse, I couldn't discern a stellar core at all, and It is absolutely massive. I reckon that there is an outer tenuous halo that stretched for the best bart of half a degree or more.

just had another look and couldn't be sure about this extended halo. Everything has a little haze around it tonight and it is hard to tell if this is real or high haze. Anyone else see anything similar??

looking for some more gaps in the cloud to bumb up the power

Here's some data, but these guys don't seem capable of simple math some silly errors in this, I think he means 228 million miles from the sun not 2.88 million.
www.thedas.org/holmes.html

That's what happens to some folks when the try to think in more than one measurement scale at a time 1 AU = ~149.6 Gm = 93 million miles.

2.44 AU*93=226.92 million miles - did they make a mistake when converting 149,597,870.691 km into miles?

Damn clouds - aaargh!

Must see comet again before it disperses completely.

Metcheck is forecasting about 52% cloud cover over Dublin on Friday night - that'll have to do.

High altitude haze here, can see brightest stars so I'll wait till the comet is abit higher, isnt the weather supposed to get better in the next day or 2 ??

Was trying to get a few shots tonight and I thought my focusing was off
but there is some very high haze. Very annoying.
The ETX can only go so high with the camera attached. Very annoying also.
Oh well,
I think its time for a new scope!

Was trying to get a few shots tonight and I thought my focusing was off
but there is some very high haze. Very annoying.
The ETX can only go so high with the camera attached. Very annoying also.
Oh well,
I think its time for a new scope!

A man of your woodwork skills should easily be able to build one, surely?

...
I think its time for a new scope!

A man of your woodwork skills should easily be able to build one, surely?

I'm not sure wooden mirrors work that well

Bart.

Ah, you'd be surprised Bart...a 1/10th PV wave surface (need a few sheets of sandpaper) and plenty clear varnish should do the trick!

Finally got outside to have a go tonight. This is a full frame shot ie 2048x2048 with the ed80 while all oyher images were cropped. Had to do some very freaky curve adjusts to bring out the faint detail

...
I think its time for a new scope!

A man of your woodwork skills should easily be able to build one, surely?

I'm not sure wooden mirrors work that well

Bart.

Mike,
I was going to build a 12'' Dob.
But then we got to working on the clubs 12''.
We are gonna restore it fully and when she's done it'll
be an awesome piece of kit.