"Reasonably dark"???... Oh my. I could only WISH for the dark skies of Mars
Hill in Flagstaff.
But.... alas... I have to settle for the ... beautiful light polluted skies of
Tempe, AZ ...
You know... the same skies that Tom Polakis has... (he is only a couple of
miles west of me...)
It was, though, a wonderful time, observing and imaging this target.
I know some lock onto the comet, and watch the stars go by.... easy to do.
But I like (personal taste here) to lock on a star, and watch the comet go
sailing along.
Different strokes.....
I have a populated filter filter wheel (for RGB-L and Ha)... I'll have to try
those some time and "check it out"...
David Douglass
David@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (main)
Dmdouglass@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Alternate)
Cell (602) 908-9092
On 12/9/18, 3:23 PM, "Brian Skiff" <az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on
behalf of bas@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 2018-12-09 at 14:09 -0700, David Douglass wrote:
> Comet 46P/Wirtnen is available in the Western skies for awhile… and it is
a bright one.
>
> The Cloudy Nights forums are reporting that it is “almost” a naked eye
visual…. Hmmmm
> But I can attest that you can find it with binoculars…. (big bright fuzz
ball).
I could see it naked-eye from Mars Hill in Flagstaff
last night, so it can't be too hard if your skies are
reasonably dark. Easy in my mighty 6x30mm binoculars.
>
> A link to my observation report which contains both a single 60s frame,
and a composite of the hour long observation……
>
> http://www.az-dahut.net/Obs-Log-Sheets/COM-46P-Wirtnen-20181208.jpg
>
>
Looks like the thing to do here is shift-and-add the images
in the stack, so that the stars are trailed and comet stays fixed.
Just wondering if astro-imagers on the list can use
filters that isolate the gas and dust components to some extent,
you might be able to get more interesting results. If you use
just a red filter (or the red pixels in a color imager), you'll
get mainly the dust component. The blue-violet region especially
has a lot of the gas emission bands, either near CN around 3900A,
or the C2 and C3 around 5100A.
\Brian
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