Star fields

Forums Comets Mystery comets Star fields

#581795
Dr Paul Leyland
Participant

I’m no good at identifying comets but I do know how to drive a plate solver. A local install of astrometry.net with the Gaia-DR2 database turns up the following for “Plate 1”.

RA,Dec = (111.067,63.945), pixel scale 20.1561 arcsec/pix.

Field center: (RA,Dec) = (111.072006, 63.929675) deg.

Field center: (RA H:M:S, Dec D:M:S) = (07:24:17.281, +63:55:46.828).

Field size: 3.21749 x 4.45504 degrees

Field rotation angle: up is 114.772 degrees E of N

Field parity: neg

Eyeball astrometry of the image gives a J2000 position for comet’s nucleus as 07:04:43.7, +63:26:31.  Please feel free to precess that to B1950 if it helps identify the comet.

Looks like it might be clear again tonight.  If so, solving the remaining prints will give me something to do while waiting for the photons to come in.