When I saw the clouds clearing out, around midnight, at the start of the morning of Tuesday, October 30, 2007, I decided to haul my rig out my front door and set it on my front landing, and I snapped a pile of images of Comet 17P Holmes.

This is a very unusual looking comet, but, with it being nearly at opposition, close to being on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, we’re essentially looking down the barrel of its tail, if it indeed has one. As for a second nucleus, neither I nor my camera can see one.

Here’s probably the best of my shots; zoomed and cropped; I took this through my Tamron 300mm lens at f/2.8; Canon Digital Rebel 300D; ISO 200; 5 second exposure.

It is just past midnight, and I have just returned home from Binbrook where Jim W., Steve G. and I were joined by a guest for a round of comet watching. Jackie stopped by to make sure that everyone got in the park safely, but her cold kept her from enjoying much of the night. Binocular views were being enjoyed and stories of comet sightings from the past couple of days were being compared while three scopes were set up. As if planned to give our guest variety, Steve set up the GWS (16″ dob), Jim set up his 8″ SC and I set up my small but mighty 80mm refractor. Jim was first out the gate and with his first telescopic view of the comet his shouts of two cores had Steve and I racing to finish our set-ups. Seconds later we were all staring through our scopes and pondering this new development. As the night wore on many images were made (a truly collaborative effort, with Steve’s camera being attached first to my scope and then to Jim’s, and all the while being supervised over by our etherial fourth member). Soon, there was speculation on the true nature of the split core (a third star was immediately agreed upon to be a background star). We plotted the nearby background stars to reference against while we watched for movement of the comet(s) and by the end of the night we were of the opinion that there were two background stars and still one cometary core. But oh, what a comet. Even if it didn’t split as was speculated, it has still been the most surprising comet in many a year and as was said tonight, truly worth the price of admission. I am looking forward to Steve’s images, more member’s comet tales, and more nights with the good company of these fine HAA members.

A quick scan of the sky with binos confirmed that the comet had grown considerably in size and magnitude. The big surprise, however, is that the telescopic view reveals not one but two tiny bright stellar cores – matching “eyes” in the center of the inner coma. This is turning into one very interesting comet!!!

Update By KerryLH:
Yes get out and catch this comet. It is a nice sight even in binoculars. In the long exposure I can see what looks like three cores but am wondering if they are background stars??? Can you confirm? below are quick snaps one from the 25th and the other from a few minutes ago showing how much of a difference a few days have made.

Taken with my c6SCT@f6.3

Here’s a close up to show the three steller looking points

UPDATE by Glenn

The nuclei look so stellar I was wondering if that was a possibility – on the Cloudy Nights forum, an imager in the UK is fairly certain that the extra point(s) of light are field stars, and Starry Night does show at least one mag 9.2 star very close. Would those stars be bright enough to penetrate the core with such definition, though… keep watching for answers!

?WOW!!! That is sooooo CUTE!!!?

Jackie has a way with words! I?ve never seen a comet like Comet Holmes. Actually, I?ve never seen ANY astronomical object anything like this little cutie. After arriving at the alternate site about 9:50 and missing Jackie by about 5 minutes, I viewed the comet with my 7 x 50 binocs and estimated its brightness at about 2.5. It appear orange-ish to me and definitely shows up as a non-stellar object in binocs. In spite of being alone on a dark road in the middle of nowhere, I could not resist setting up my telescope to get a better view of the comet. Because it is so bright, the comet bears magnification well. (I can’t wait to see it in a bigger scope!!)

Jackie came flying back to the alternate site after calling my cell and discovering that I was there. We spent the next hour and a half observing the comet and photographing it through my 70 mm Pronto. To pick up the beautiful structure within the comet, we needed to use short exposures. Longer exposures did not show any sign of a tail or outlying structure.

To me, the halo around the bright, inner core appeared like a finely and faintly made spirograph pattern ? textured, not uniform. Both Jackie and I thought the core appeared at times oval and then round. It could have been the seeing or possibly (especially in my case) astigmatism. In any event, it is a beautiful sight and I?m sure it is going to continue to be full of surprises.

You can bet that these two enthusiastic Astrodollies will be glued to our eyepieces and cameras as long as Comet Cutie is in the sky!

Ann T.
Astrodollie

Comet 17P by Jackie Fulton

Last night from home I did a quick setup on the driveway, with binoculars, camping chair, and c6 on the goto mount. I really wanted to meet up with the group in Binbrook but was just too tired to pack up the equipment for the long haul.

After looking at various star charts, it took my no time to scan around and find the comet that everyone is talking about. It was so cool to see it as an unusual glowing yellow ball in binoculars. It was so bright that you could even see it with your unaided eyes even with the full moon. I set up my mount for tracking and aimed it at the comet. You could definately make out a tiny bright core surrounded by a large circular glow. I hooked up my camera and snapped a few 30sec shots at a high ISO… wow… It was so bright that no detail was picked up on the camera I just looked like a large solid ball. I had to slow down my shutter speed to 16 sec and knock the iso down to 200. Ok now I was able to see something, the tiny bright core was very evident and there looked like the beginnings of a tiny stub of a tail. I snapped away to get as many frames as possible so that I could stack them. For fun I took one really long exposure to see if there was a tail but I could not see one. Could it develop a noticeable tail in the coming days or weeks??? Anyway my best captures as well as my experimental shot is below.

Canon40D + c6SCT @f10
ISO 200 exposures ranging from 16 to 30 sec. totalling ~3min
I increased saturation a bit and noticed some other colours.

underexposed to show the tiny core

The experimental shot… looking for a possible faint tail…
I read somewhere that the green glow from overexposing is probably from ionized gas, and can’t be seen visually. Cool eh?

By KerryLH

While a group headed out to observe the comet from the alternate site, I observed it from my backyard last night with my 7×50 binos around midnight. It appeared to be a little larger than Mars and had distinct colour. I could easily see a yellow core surrounded by a soft green coma (even with the moon, street and house lights). I didn’t notice that the core was slightly offset from the center, but then binos didn’t provide enough magnification. No perceptable tail.

I’ll be looking forward to when I can train one of my scopes on it to bring out more detail at higher magnification. This “star” was very easily naked eye observable. Didn’t need any charts to figure out that the upside down stylized “F” of Perseus had a new visitor. It appeared to be the 2nd brightest object in Perseus. It’ll be interesting to observe it’s position change over the next few days and weeks (if it stays this bright).

Let’s see and hear the reports from the others that were out observing. I understand that some photos have been taken, and I know we’re eagerly waiting to see some of them. Hopefully the “Astro-Dollies” will post some of their antics and adventures from last night.

I have just come in from observing our new visitor, and Glenn’s description is quite accurate. Comet Holmes is easily recognizable as the star that doesn’t belong in Perseus! I believe Glenn’s estimate of mag. 2.5 is as good as any guess I could make. Through both my 10x60s and 15x70s the comet appears quite compact, tailless, and very bright. The halo is dense, and although to the naked eye the comet appears stellar (at least to these old eyes on a near full moon night) through the binos the halo has quite a bit of texture. I also found it to have a warm colour to it. Looking with my 5″ dob at 72x and then at 140x showed a remarkable sight. The core appears very bright, small but non-stellar, and embedded in a halo. It is not centered in the halo; I found it to be close, but slightly off center. Then there appears to be an even fainter halo surrounding the whole thing. So there seems to be three definable regions. The soft yellow colour seems present in the scope too. What does everyone else see? I am looking forward to further developments. It is changing daily, so keep your eyes on it!

Comet 17P/Holmes has experienced an outburst in the last day or so, apparently bringing it to naked eye visibility.
On its way up to Alpha Persei (Mirfak) it should be easy to locate. Reports are that its appearance is tailless, somewhat stellar, rather like a nova.
Here is a link to a site where you can get a comet finding chart:

http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/comets/17P.gif

Thursday night may be clear, let us know if you spot it.

UPDATE: Having got the map oriented correctly the comet was quite easy to spot – it is definitely naked eye (~mag. 2.5). Find Mirfak and you will see two stars below it forming the base of “dunce hat”. The one on the right is Delta Persei, the one on the left is the comet – small bright core surrounded by a compact halo 🙂

Spaceweather.com has a nice gallery of photos of the comet:

http://www.spaceweather.com

Despite our best intentions, once again the weather gods conspired against us and the clouds never parted to allow us to view the occultation.

Ann T with the ever enthusiastic Alex, Jackie F, Jim W and myself were at our usual observing site atop the hill at Binbrook Conservation area after 6pm. It was obvious from the moment we arrived that the clouds were going to be too thick to even see the moon, let alone the occultation. No equipment was brought out except for a compass to check for orientation and a camcorder to record our high, if misplaced, spirits. We waited up to the time of the event in hopes that we might chance upon a sucker hole in the clouds, but it never transpired.

Disappointed, but unphased, we retired shortly afterwards, some to one of the favourite coffee shops and others to home. We will continue to try until we get the right combination of weather and proximity to our area. Stay tuned to this blog for updates of the next event!

After a long stretch of poor conditions, I had to take advantage of the clear nights this past weekend.

Saturday night I just stayed out long enough to take a few quick snaps of the moon through my 28-300mm (@300mm) camera lens. I was pretty happy that the live preview on the canon 40D really helped to get a sharp focus with my ‘not so great’ zoom lens.

Sunday night I was on a mission to capture some winter DSOs. It was really mild and I figured this may be my only chance to do this before the cold winter nights decide to settle in. I set up in the evening, took a nap since the moon wasn’t going to set till after midnight. There were also some high clouds passing by overhead which I figured would be gone later in the night. I woke up around 12:30am to beautiful clear skies and a warm southwest breeze. I was so happy to be feeling refreshed and very awake.

All photos were taken with the Canon 40D and the SW 80mm Equinox, except M1 which was taken with the 6in SCT.

M45
23x180sec

M42 I am so glad to have finally captured this great nebula
15x180sec
21x60sec
20x30sec
20x10sec

M1 Crab Nebula… So tiny. I did a few sharpening routines to bring out some detail. This object needs to be imaged with a scope bigger than the 6in. Next time I’ll try it without the focal reducer.
18x180sec

KerryLH