Managed a visual of above comet last night with my 12" D-K Mewlon. I started looking for it about 11.30pm BST but cloud in the way. The cloud only slowly thinned out so initially although I could see brighter stars no chance on the comet especially as the sky was not at it's darkest and of course doesn't get fully dark at all at the moment (52.5 degs North), also a slightly gibbous moon still above the horizon wasn't helping. By about 11.45pm BST I had it, initially picking it up in my 40mm Pentax giving x90. Had a stellar core like a faint star with a small faint halo around it. I spent the next 10 or 15 mins trying different e/p's and a comet filter (completely killed it): 56mm plossl, 27mm Panoptic, 30mm Tak LE, 20mm Pentax. The 27mm Pan (x135, 0.5 deg FOV) gave the best view but the 40mm Pentax was best for aquiring it after I lost it a couple of times - once close to the bright star SAO 52611 but mainly after losing a bit of dark adaption to sketch it. The first time I lost it was when I spent a few minutes getting pencil and paper ready to sketch with the reason being slight loss of dark adaption AND it had moved considerably! The sketch timed at 2315 hrs UT shows it below and in the middle of those 3 brightish stars. About 10 mins later it had moved adjacent to the middle one and I could only aquire a faint 'star'. A bit of concentration with dark adaption coming back and moving away I aquired the halo again. Only 18 mins after the sketch time it had moved adjacent to a faint star above SAO 52611 (see smaller sketch to right). Diagonal used so laterally inverted image. A couple of times I thought I detected a fan shape but too fleeting and tenuous to sketch but the halo and movement in 'real' time was enough to satisfy myself that I'd visually observed this comet in not fully dark skies. At no time could I detect it in my 4" apo. Regards, Andrew Robertson |
Page last updated: Sun 2 Apr 08:05:27 BST 2023