[AZ-Observing] Re: Comet Holmes first look tonight

And it just keeps growing and growing and growing...

The comet's naked eye brightness seems the same as the last two  
nights. With my stargazing glasses, it continues to be just shy of  
stellar--it's just a bit blunt compared to nearby stars. Color  
through binoculars and the telescope is similar to yesterday--a warm  
ivory color. As it's grown, features have become softer and more  
irregular.

The pseudo-nucleus is less prominent, but still distinctly stellar.  
The central fan structure is softer and still pointed at about 220  
degrees PA. Further brightness around this fan makes me wonder if a  
second ring of material has been ejected and is slowly merging  
outward. The edges of the coma are both softer and also seem to have  
a scalloped appearance. Finally, the faint outer halo seems to have  
an irregular appearance to it--I still see the southwest side as  
being just a bit brighter than the rest.

All the features have grown significantly. Measurements with my  
astrometric eyepiece yield:

     * central condensation: 38 x 52 arc seconds
     * coma: 215 arc seconds / 3.6 arc minutes
     * outer halo: 585 arc seconds / 9.7 arc minutes

I wanted to keep my detail sketches consistently at the same scale,  
but the whole thing has gotten too big to continue the 240X/12 arc- 
minute-wide TFOV sketches. So I've dropped that down to 120X/24 arc- 
minute-wide TFOV. I was interested to find that the double star  
visible at the southeast side of the low power view has the  
designation ES 1064 (Espin). It's continuously fascinating to watch  
this beautiful comet develop daily.

Sketches can be found here:

http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000743.html

And then there's poor lonely, neglected C/2007 F1 (LONEOS)...I  
managed to catch it briefly tonight before it sank below my less-than- 
ideal western horizon. That report and sketch can be found here:

http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000742.html

Thanks everyone for sharing all your observations!

Jeremy
http://beltofvenus.perezmedia.net

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