2025a6 20251007 045125 ndj

I'm just back from the Comets and Meteors meeting in Edinburgh where this comet was a hot topic.

This was a challenging observation. There was a lot of cloud around which was brightly illuminated by the full Moon low in the west. This is a stack of ten frames taken in a gap just as nautical twilight approached. The growing dust tail is visible as a broad fan in the same PA as the long, thin, ion tail. I get mag 6.3 using Comphot on the green pixels of this image. The bright orange star near the left edge is 3rd magnitude mu UMa.

I'm going to have to drop my exposure length with this system from 120 to 60s since the comet is moving faster now and the core is approaching saturation, particularly in a bright sky.