C/2013 R1 Lovejoy and its tail Today

I had meant to be publishing a few of yesterday's images of Lovejoy - those will have to wait :) When I saw how the imaging of today's Lovejoy was going I thought yes - another Tail :)

Composite taken 25/11/2013 at 05:51:22.625 and 05:58.53.968 GMT (UT)
Purposely over exposed to show tail.
Each image FOV 116.5 x 77.7 arcmins - north is up.
SON@OSC (Searchlight Observatory Network at the Observatorio Sierra Contraviesa, Granada, Spain)
4" Pentax Refractor at F4, SBIG ST8 with clear filter. 1 minute exposure binx2 Observers Tony Angel & Caisey Harlingten

Little text today - so just enjoy :)

Its been a funny couple of days.

The two main comet Facebook Comet Groups I belong to - CIOC_ISON and Comet Watch - have been suffering from a shortage of current images over the past few day. Many of us have been clouded out - even though we are fairly scattered around the world.

I did manage to rescue some LRGB images from Saturday morning, but they were shot through cloud layers, which produced unusual results. I displayed one of them on Neil Norman's Comet Watch and was surprised by the positive response - I think partially because we were getting withdrawal symptoms and anything new to do with ISON helped.

On Sunday I messaged Petri Kehusmaa ,who is responsible for the SON New Mexico Observatory, asked if he could take an image of ISON for me to share with the groups and he came up trumps, even though it was hitting the limits of his local horizon, and he had to wait until just before dawn.. What I also did not know at the time was the operational telescope had not yet had First Light. Here is Petri's First Light image of Comet ISON:

The weather now seems to changing and over the past half day more images are starting to come in.

Sunday Evening saw the broadcast that I did a prerecorded interview for and +Padma Yanamandra-Fisher did live (brave lady), This was for Under British Skies on Astronomy.FM . If you missed it and would like to hear it then do not worry, a podcast will be available in a few days.

I had intended covering a recent discussion on whether Comet ISON is starting to fragment or not! That will have to wait for another day as I will soon be opening the observatory. The sky is fairly clear, so providing there is no last minute clouding we will capture some images of at least ISON,

ISON and feeling happy :)

Just woke up from my siesta (well I did make do with just four hours last night) and saw on the CIOC_ISON Facebook Page :

ALERT: images from earlier today: from Tony Angel:
 maybe outburst - please image, take spectra ??
 Thanks Tony for the quick alert.... Thanks, Padma Fisher

CIOC_ISON: is the Pro-Am Collaboration for Support of NASA Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) via Social Media.

Click here to read Padma's article or visit the NASA Comet ISON Observing Campaign

I do know that I was not the only person to pick this up, but it still feels good :)

Special on ISON - Observation from this morning.

C/2012 S1 ISON . this morning 13/11/2013 at 05:30 GMT SON@OSC 4" refractor F4 ST8

The two tails are like searchlights - both of similar dimensions and brightness (or I might be talking a load of rubbish)

FOV 116.5 x 77.7 arcmins

Please note that this was a quick and dirty process so that anyone who is just about to start their observing run can have an idea what to look for :)

Observations of Tuesday morning 11/11/2013

Written 12/11/2013 started whilst observing.

Not sure which is more stressful; chasing the comets to image before dawn, processing the most interesting images or thinking of what to write on here :)

Certainly chasing the comets is getting more hectic as drop lower in the sky and it becomes a race to beat dawn.C/2013 R1 Lovejoy is bright and high in the sky, in fact I realised after the fact that I need to look at bringing down the exposure time for Lovejoy.  C/2012 S1 ISON is still high enough to get reasonable images, but 2P/Encke and C/2012 X1 Linear are getting quite difficult.  Today will be the last time I will try - if I have time - for a colour image of Encke and Linear.

All images were captured using the SON@OSC Observatory (Searchlight Observatory Network) 4" Pentax F4 Refractor and an ST8 CCD camera

Here are some of yesterday's images.

The t(r)ail on Encke is still very distinct and some 150 arc minutes of it are visible

2P/Encke

2P/Encke

Linear is getting quite faint, especially now dawn approaches. It is still possible to see the what is left from the recent outburst. 

C/2012 X1 Linear

C/2012 X1 Linear

I expect that this will be the final colour image.

he

C/2012 X1 Linear

The second tail of ISON was first observed a couple of days ago. This was the first chance I have had to image ISON and capture the two tails.

C/2012 S1 ISON

C/2012 S1 ISON

The two tails of Lovejoy are quite clear. There seems to be, below the other two tails, either a third tail starting or a minor outburst. 

  

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

I will start the observing report of this morning's observations soon. The tails of ISON have changed so I will want to get an image on here soon. :)

Another tail - this time C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

Just a shot blog today (11/11/2013). As Lovejoy is now the brightest comet in the sky by far I thought I would see if how much of the tail I could image. It was soon obvious that the tail extended beyond the width of the image - some 115 arc seconds, so I took a second and third overlapping images and found that two overlapping images could pick up all the tail capable of being captured by the current SON@OSC set up for wide field imaging - 4" F4 Pentax refractor and an SBig ST8 ccd camera.

The following images are not pretty pictures - the aim is not for beauty but for detail. That is not to say you cannot have both beauty and detail - the images of @Damien Peach belay that idea, however in this instance I needed to really stretch the image to bring out the ion tail.

First Image - showing coma and tail

Second Image - showing tail

Third Image - no tail found

Joined images one and two together.

I have seen one other image that shows the unusual detail in the second image.

Comments are welcome :)

More on Friday Morning's Comets plus Saturday Morning's Comets - that quartet again!

On Friday 08/11/2013 I wrote a little about 2P/Encke and that day's imaging of it. Here are some other images I took that morning.

C/2012 S1 ISON

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy Negative

C/2012 X1 Linear

C/2012 X1 Linear Crop

Saturday morning - 09/11/2013 - covered the Quartet - Again!.

First 2P/Encke. As there was a fair amount on interest in its trail I spent as much time as possible on imaging this before dawn came.

What follows are four versions of the same image. The first is the regular image. The second is the negative. The third is a stretched regular and the fourth a stretched negatve. In the final image you can really see the meandering trail.

2P/Encke

2P/Encke

2P/Encke

2P/Encke

Below is C/2012 S1 ISON.  This is still not developing very much, though I did see an image that was taken 24 hrs after this one and a second tail has now clearly appeared. I will be trying for this tomorrow morning.

C/2012 S1 ISON

C/2012 X1 Linear continues to be fairly bright after its outburst.

C/2012 X1 Linear

C.2013 R1 Lovejoy is really becoming the star of the show. It continues to brighten and is well ahead of ISON. Where as ISON is difficult to see in 10x50 binos, Lovejoy is now being seen with the naked eye.

I used four different method of processing Lovejoy to see if I could bring out more detail. I then stretched each one.

Process 1.

Process 2

 Process 3 

Process 4

All the images were taken using the Searchlight Observatory Network Observatory here in the Sierra Contraviesa, Granada, Spain at an altitude of 4,500 feet. The telescope used is a 4" Pentax F4 refractor and the camera is a SBig ST8 . All the images, with the exception of the cropped Linear are FOV 116.5 x 77.7 arcmins

There was no observing on the morning of Sunday 10th November due to my wife going to England for a week or two. I thought it would not go down too well to open the observatory while she was getting ready to leave :)

In the next blog I will include some objects that are not comets :)

A Kinky Tail or Trail? Comet 2P/Encke

I had a good observing session again using the SON@OSC observatory. Again I have been using the beautiful 4" Pentax F4 refractor along with the SBIG ST8 camera.

How many of us make a "discovery" only to find that it has been known about for some time? There is though the satisfaction of knowing that you have spotted something out of the ordinary. :)

I have taken a number of images of 2P Encke that have shown it unusual tail, but one of this morning's images really brought it out. I posted it on the closed user group on Facebook "Comet Watch" this morning and it attracted quite a lot of positive comments and likes. Some of the comments also helped me to understand what is going on.

Before that, here is the image that I "played" around with to bring out the detail.

and a cutout section to show more

As you can see, especially in the second image the "tail" has quite a few kinks in it. My understanding - and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong - is that what we are looking at is the comet dust trail (not the tail) - the very same that causes the Taurids meteor showers. 

Why there are kinks is another matter. They have been known about for over a 100 years. This is a report from the MNRAS 1904.

It was to be more than ninety years after this visual viewing that trails were first imaged by large professional observatories and it was not until 2007 that amateur astronomers first imaged one. There is a nice article in Sky & Telescope about it 

A Comet Caught by Its Trail March 15, 2007 by Mike Holloway

Well worth a read, but to get back to the kinks,  Were they caused by comet outbursts, solar winds, coronal mass ejections or even close encounters with asteroids?  I do not know. I will continue to image the trail and to examine again some of my other images of 2P Encke. 

This morning I also imaged C/2012 S1 ISON, C/2012 X1 Linear and C/2013 R1 Lovejoy. These will be published shortly.

Comet 2P Encke is an interesting comet for a number of other reasons.

It was the 2nd Periodic Comet to be discovered (Halley is 1P/Halley)

It has a very short orbital time - just over 3 years - which means that there is a good probability that I will be able observe it a few more times at least :)

Observing report for mornings of the 1st, 4th and 7th of November 2013

Observing report

The following images were all taken at the SON@OSC (Searchlight Observatory Network at the Observatorio Sierra Contraviesa)

4" Pentax Refractor at F4 plus an ST8 CCD camera

Observing 01/11/2013

Slightly overslept plus thin cloud to the East. Just suitable for C/2012 X1 Linear, and managed to capture C/2012 S1 ISON, C/2013 R1 Lovejoy and 2P Encke. In the case of 2P Encke I originally thought that the cloud was thick enough to hide most of the ion tail, however when I made a negative the ion tail is very clear, so much so that it has been complimented on Facebook Comet Groups.

C/2012 S1 ISON

C/2012 S1 ISON

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

2P Encke

C/2012 X1 Linear - negative

C/2012 X1 Linear

Observing 04/11/2013

This sky this morning was not very good as a mist came rolling in. This meant that imaging the two lower altitude comets 2P Encke and C/2012 X1 Linear was impossible. C/2012 S1 ISON when imaged was so faint it was useless. That left C/2013 R1 Lovejoy. The mist was thin enough to image this a number of times using the clear filter and also LRGB. On processing though it soon clear that the LRGB images were not very good and the once's through the clear filter although reasonable were not showing as much of the tail that other observers were seeing, though I have managed to bring out what I believe to be the ion tail in the negative.

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy

C/2013 Lovejoy negative showing tail

Observing 07/11/2013

Woke up at 4:30 ready to image the four comets. Disaster, the electric had been off the previous night and the CCD camera was warm. Set the cooling on, but there must be some slight condensation somewhere as it took just about the rest of the night to dry it out. :(  I managed to take a few images of C/2012 S1 ISON. I have trimmed the best one.

C/2012 S1 Linear

 This evening I intend to change the configuration!