Three Comets in the 
Morning Sky
October 4, 2013

 

            
 There are
            currently three brighter comets to image and view in the early
            morning sky before sunup. All are faint as far as visual goes
            right now, however Encke and Ison are becoming brighter each
            week. The first up was comet Encke. Now in Auriga, this comet
            can be imaged for many hours as it passes through the zenith.
            High winds were howling through the trees on this morning, and
            it was difficult to get my 12 inch to stay still for an hour
            at a time. This shows up in the Encke image below as wavering
            star trails. This half an hour of short 1 minute exposures with
            my ST10XME CCD, which has a field around half a degree here.
            The comet started in the center when I began exposing, but soon
            moved to toward the edge of the field with its fast hourly movement!

            
The second comet
            here is Comet Lovejoy. Around 11th magnitude, it surprisingly
            has a short tail. It too as all comets do was slowly moving against
            the starry background during the exposure, but no where near
            as fast as Encke.

            
The third comet
            is ISON, on its way hopefully to become much brighter in the
            coming months. Now around 9.5 magnitude, this comet is starting
            to show some coloration as it starts to boil off the volitiles.
            Its moving pretty fast too, and will be rapidly accelerating
            as it comes in.

 

            


            
2P/Comet Encke
27 x 1min exposures

Very nice fan in a dim tail, and some
hints of a nucleus on the right side.
The wind made a mess of the stars,
but the comets details are good!

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C/2013 R1 Comet Lovejoy
6x5m Exposures

A short stubby tail points to the upper
right here.

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C/2012 S1 Comet ISON
A series of 5 min exposures
totaling 1h 15m

Here the wind was much calmer, and
I was able to get really great clean
star trails and a sharp clean head.
As you can see, the comet is much brighter
now.  I was just barely able to glimpse it
with the 8 x 50 finder as a dim streak.
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Lens:  12.5" f/5 Home built Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200 
Exposure:  See above
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  3/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  40F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
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