Finally, a night where… A) The sky is clear. B) The wind is not howling through the palm trees. C) I am not exhausted by working the summit. D) I do not have to get up early the next morning.
A + B + C + D = Astrophotography from the driveway!
Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd on 29 March 2012 showing both tails, sum of 50 x 1 min exposures CoolSNAP ES and 180mm f/2.8 lensThus, under a very pretty sky, I rolled the photo rig out of the garage and spent some time getting everything back together. I was not in a hurry, time to let a bright crescent Moon set a little and my primary target rise a little. The target at the top of the list? Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd.
The comet is nicely placed in Ursa Major, transiting late in the evening, available for several hours of exposures. And expose I did, with the auto-guider locked on the a dim star beside the comet, the shutter open for well over two hours. I was shooting my Canon 20Da and the AT6RC, a combination that framed the comet nicely.
It will take a while to get the resulting images processed. In the meantime I did a quick process on a set of images taken with the wide field/finder CCD camera. The results of which can be seen at the right. I also shot a few quick images of the M95 area with the CCD to capture SN2012aw.
I did attempt to see comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy in the daylight. I actually tried several times. Once on the morning of the 15th and a couple more times on the morning of the 16th after I heard that the comet had survived perihelion passage. Neither time did I see the comet with an unaided eye.
On the 15th I was not surprised I could not see it. I was in Waimea where there was a lot of low altitude haze and a lot of glare around the Sun. On the 16th I had a much better chance using the clean high altitude air of the summit of Mauna Kea. But still, no comet seen even though it should be just over four degrees from the Sun. This is about the same separation that had allowed me to see comet McNaught in early 2007.
Just to be certain I set the camera on a tripod, placed it just inside the shadow of the Keck 1 dome, and blazed away. Examining the photos on the camera display likewise revealed no trace of the comet, but there were some interesting spots of light.
It was not until I sat down and really analyzed the raw frames that I found something. Using some astronomy software, I calculated the position of the comet when the shots were taken and the field of view of the camera. And lo! There it was, a small spot with a trace of tail. It showed up best in the green channel, and not at all in the blue thanks to Rayleigh scattering in our atmosphere. Stacking nine of ten frames and processing the heck out of the frames does allow you to clearly see the comet…
Comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy photographed 4° from the Sun on at 19:47UT on the morning of 16Dec2011. Canon 60D and an 85mm lens, stack of nine frames, green channel only.
Will Comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy be visible in the daytime? This is the morning to find out. Look about 2° below the rising Sun once it is well up in the clear sky for a small white object. Two degrees is four times the Sun’s width in the sky.
C2006/P1 McNaught photographed five degrees from the Sun, stack of three imagesIf the comet is not visible to the eye, it should be spectacularly visible in the imagery sent back by one of our solar monitoring satellites. Check out the SOHO page for the latest imagery. The comet should have entered the field of view of the LASCO C3 instrument early on Dec 14th (late on the 13th HST) and well in by the time this posts. If the comet does not survive perihelion passage, this is one of the best views of the event.
I have seen one other daytime comet in my life, C2006/P1 McNaught back in January of 2007. That time the comet was about 5° from the Sun, over twice as far away from the glare. The photo at the right should give an idea of what to look for today. Remember to shield your eyes from the Sun’s glare by positioning yourself to put the Sun behind some object like a wall or streetlight. There is no guarantee that Lovejoy will be at all visible, but it is worth taking a look this morning.
The rumor is running around the various astronomy sites and listservers that Comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy might be daytime visible. Will it be? That is a very qualified maybe.
C2006/P1 McNaught photographed five degrees from the Sun, stack of three imagesThis sun-grazer comet was discovered just a few days ago, on November 27th, by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy. The comet is a member of the Kreutz comet family, and like other members of the family it will approach the Sun quite closely, about 548,000 miles (882,000 km) from the Sun. Of course those distances are solar centric distances. Taking the radius of the Sun into account means that the comet will be a mere 115,000 miles (186,000 km) above the photosphere, hot indeed!
It becomes a valid question to ask if comet Lovejoy will even survive perihelion transit.
Passing that close to the Sun will mean that the volatile elements of the comet will be streaming off the comet at a fantastic rate, enough to dramatically brighten the comet. Below you will find the ephemeris for perihelion on Dec 16th (Dec 15th HST) from the Minor Planet Center. As you can note, the predicted magnitude is -8! This is bright enough to be seen in broad daylight. Thus the possibility of a daytime comet.
The catch is that the comet will be quite close to the Sun. Within 2° as the Sun and comet rise on the morning of the 15th here in Hawai’i. For observers in the islands the best chance to look is on the morning of the 15th, as perihelion will occur in the afternoon as the comet passed behind the Sun from our point of view.
Will it be visible? Maybe. It depends on the accuracy of the magnitude estimates, which are uncertain to say the least. It could be substantially dimmer, or even substantially brighter than forecast under such conditions. The proximity to the Sun also complicates the issue. It is worth a look, seeing a daytime comet is highly unusual.
If you do look please take a few simple precautions… Do NOT use any sort of optical aid this close to the Sun, the risk of permanent eye damage is too great. If it is bright enough the comet should be a naked eye object. It will greatly help to position yourself to put the Sun just behind some obstruction. A building, a streetlight, anything to block the Sun’s glare and aid in picking out the comet. On the morning of the 15th the comet will rise 2° behind the Sun, thus 2° lower in the sky.
I am waiting for the Moon to leave the evening sky before shooting the comet again. In the meantime I am processing more of the material obtained earlier in the month. In this case a photo of Comet 103P/Hartley 2 taken October 6th with Keck 2 and DEIMOS. The image marks the first time I have attempted to take and process an image with a 10m telescope. Just a wee bit larger than the 76mm refractor I usually use to take astrophotos!
The image is notable for its complete lack of any interesting structure. There are no jets, shells or other inner coma detail visible. The tail is simply a general brightening to the southwest (lower right in this image).
The comet is moving very quickly across the sky, even more so with the high magnification lent by a large telescope. Even short exposures turn the stars into long streaks. In this case multicolor streaks as the camera cycles through the filters needed for a color image.
Comet 103P Hartley 2 with Keck2 and DEIMOS 6Oct2010 @ 7:27UT, 3x60s, 3x60s and 3x120s with standard BVR astrometric filters, credit: Cooper/Wirth/W.M. Keck Observatory
The clouds have not been kind to those of use hoping to observe a comet here in Hawai’i. Last night Deb and I were at the Mauna Kea VIS, volunteering with the evening stargazing. I had hoped to get a good look at the comet from a dark site. But the clouds kept me from seeing the comet at all. A few people did get a look when a hole in the clouds allowed a glimpse, but by the time I got to an eyepiece the clouds had again closed over Leo, obscuring the view.
I did get a few hours of decent skies a few nights ago from the driveway in Waikoloa. I took advantage of that time to get twenty four minute exposures with the Canon 20Da and forty exposures with the CCD camera. Unfortunately the streetlights precluded my getting a decent visual view. The camera did a bit better, revealing some interesting structure to the tail.
Processing the image proved to be quite a challenge. The comet is moving very fast against the background stars. Aligning the images on the stars turns the comet into a long blur, likewise aligning the images on the comet creates streaks in place of stars. The answer is to process the image both ways and add the two resulting frames together as layers in Photoshop. This is the first time I had attempted this process and the results are reasonable…
Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin on the morning of 22 Feb 2009
See a naked eye asteroid? Why not? I had never seen an asteroid with the unaided eye before and here was a good chance. Was it worth setting the alarm clock for 2am? Sure, you cannot answer that with a no if you are truly an amateur astronomer.
Off goes the alarm… wife starts grumbling… throw a few things in the vehicle… a few more complaints from my wife now up and awake… feed the cats… A kiss… and off into the dark. I setup at the end of the development where the streetlights have yet to be turned on, at the end of a dead end road surrounded by lots that have been graded but not yet built on. While setting up the gear I discover I am not quite alone, listening to hooves clattering up the road towards me. Someone riding by moonlight? No, just three feral donkeys that wander past. Later, the calm was broken by a male donkey being, ah, quite energetic, just up the hill, and willing to tell the world about it.
Conditions could have been better, Jupiter was a swimming ball, so much for a little planetary viewing to pass the time awaiting moonset. Transparency was only so-so with the usual low altitude tropical haze and the occasional cloud scudding through. So just sit back and enjoy the night for a while, and try to ignore the loud braying that occasionally disturbed the otherwise peaceful night.
As I waited for the moon to set I noticed a bank of clouds approaching from the northeast. The usual cloud bank over the Kohala volcano was reaching out a little further than it usually does. This was a bit of a concern, when the trade winds are blowing this cloud bank usually forms over the Kohala and with it a heavy misting rain that drizzles constantly in Waimea. I looked about at my gear and decided to cover some of it up in case this cloud bank got closer.
And it did, and as usual the mist was falling ahead of it driven by the steady breeze. Combine a wall of mist and a setting bright moon and the unexpected can occur. I looked out to check the cloud’s position and quickly did a double take. Hanging there in the wall of mist was a beautiful, ghostly moonbow. Grab the camera time!
Camera, tripod, remote shutter release… dash 50yds to where the big power lines would not dominate the picture… hope not to find the donkeys that are around here somewhere… find a spot on the rocks of the ancient lava flow where I could setup the tripod without endangering the camera or my ankles… in the dark… focus the camera… in the dark… frame… program the shutter release for a one minute shot… fire! Time for two frames before the moonbow faded from sight. A quick check of the frames and victory! Got it!
Moonbow! 1min, Canon 20Da, 17mm@f/4 with the lights of Waimea at center
With the fading moonbow and the setting Moon I was able to return to my mission objective, Vesta without optical aid. Finding the asteroid was trivial, just starhop up from Jupiter or down from ζOph and there is was. Swung my little TV-76 to the correct location and there it was, right on the location plotted. Easy to see at about 5.5 mag. a little brighter than HIP80793 at 5.6 mag. that was located about 1°sp. Naked eye was tougher, there was a line of 4-4.2 mag. stars coming up from Sco that was relatively easy, but it took averted vision to find Vesta and then only occasionally as it would appear and dissapear before my eye. I was clearly being hampered by the lousy seeing and poor transparency down lower in the sky. I am sure from a better site, possibly up on the side of Mauna Kea without the moonlight it would be quite simple to spot. I will need to try again before this opposition is over. That will have to wait a bit until after full Moon.
C/2006 P1 McNaught is currently passing close to the Sun. At a mere 18 million miles (0.197 AU) from the Sun the intense solar radiation is causing the comet to boil and vent violently. The resulting cloud of gas and dust is reflecting enough sunlight to brighten the comet dramatically. Estimates are placing the comet at mag. -5 or even mag. -6. This is much brighter than even Venus! Some observers are reporting easy unaided eye visibility, but in the sky over Tucson a lot of dust and aerosols in the air are causing a great deal of glare around the Sun. Thus binoculars or a telescope is required to see the comet.
C/2006 P1 McNaught captured with a TV-76 operating at f/5 and a Canon 20Da DSLR, 1/8000 sec, gain at 100ISO. Taken 2:29pm 14 Jan, 2007 and processed with Photoshop. Three frames aligned and stacked in Photoshop to improve the signal to noise ratio.The challenge is that Comet McNaught is just five degrees east of the Sun. Observing so close to the Sun presents distinct dangers, I do not want to fry my retina! So I carefully positioned my TV-76 on the alt-az mount so that the Sun was just behind the edge of my carport. Thus I could pan around and locate the comet with little fear of direct sunlight down the tube. A few frames with the Canon 20Da turned out OK but not great, those dust and aerosols in the sky and the resulting glare is reducing the signal to noise in the images. The photo to the right is a stack of three images in an attempt to improve the signal to noise, then greatly cropped in and levels adjusted in Photoshop.
The view was better in the eyepiece. A sharp point of the coma with a fan shaped tail. This really looks like a classic comet, I had not expected such a good tail in the bright sunlit sky. This is my first daytime comet, and since the opportunity may not come again anytime soon, this may be my only chance to see one, truly a once in a lifetime event!
