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C/2025 R2 via T59 at Siding Spring (1x60s; 2025/10/18 20:24). The apparent movement of the comet is quite fast at the moment: more than 11 arcsec/min.
Pleased to snap C/2025 R2 this evening, when it was low in the SW. Put the telescope on Phi Oph at about 7.15pm and waited for sky to darken.
12x10s, midpoint 2025/10/11 18:45 UT
MiniCat51 – Image Centre RA 16h 30m 48.5s, Dec -16° 40′ 04.6″ – Pos Angle +208° 40.5′- FL 173.6 mm, 8.94″/PixelAttachments:
Captured this morning with my Seestar. Looking good!
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Will do. Was up this morning at 4am to observe, but there was a lot of cloud from the N to E. Of course it had all cleared by 9am…David
Haha. (Apart from this) I haven’t seen much April Fool’s Day content across the media. Serious times, I guess. David
Amazing.
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Development of ion tail into at least three streamers.
MIDPOINT = ‘2023-01-29T20:59:22’ /UT of midpoint of exposureAttachments:
Captured this eve (midpoint) 2023-01-28T19:12. Lovely ion tail.
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Yes, that’s quite a rate of movement across the sky at Fri [corrected] 00:00 GMT. David
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Sleeker ion tail when imaged last night. The comet’s hood lends it the appearance of a speeding bullet.
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Mike and Martin,
Your posts prompted me to have look just now: they have indeed moved!!
You’re right Nick, there were / are some issues – I’ve seen a lot of hot pixels (not calibrating out), dead pixel columns and so on in my images. I’m less fastidious than you I suspect, so iTel is still more than good enough for me – for an astro fix when the weather is bad oop north. Let me know though if other remote observing solutions come your way – please.
From Discord forum:
mladen (iTelescope) — 10/01/2023 21:55
Our apologies. Overhauling all scopes after many years of service. Estimated at around 10 days work. Our team is in New Mexico Skies, working around the clock.mladen (iTelescope) — 12/01/2023 22:13
T02 (and all of New Mexico Skies) has been on extended maintenance from the 10th of January. This is scheduled to end by the 21st of January.Hello,
I observed on 29 days of 2022. By far my best month was December, followed by October then January. Comets were my main target, but I did also take pictures of assorted transients, globulars and other DSOs.
A poor year. But interestingly(?) I did observe on both the first and last days of 2022!
David
Nick,
I am not a member of the solar section, nor am I an expert on these matters. You may want to look here though:
https://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/questions.htm#AR_numbers
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I’ve seen reference to a formal naming system for sunspots. Where can this be found?
There is no naming or numbering system for sunspots. There is a system for numbering active regions, however. An active region can contain one or more spots. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) numbers active regions consecutively as they are observed on the Sun. According to David Speich at NOAA, an active region must be observed by two observatories before it is given a number (a region may be numbered before its presence is confirmed by another observatory if a flare is observed to occur in it, however). The present numbering system started on January 5, 1972, and has been consecutive since then. An example of an active region “name” is “AR5128” (AR for Active Region) or “NOAA Region 5128”. Since we only see active regions when they are on the side of the Sun facing the Earth, and the Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days (the equator rotates faster than the poles), the same active region may be seen more than once (if it lasts long enough). In this case the region will be given a new number. Hence, a long-lived active region may get several numbers.
On June 14, 2002, active region number 10000 was reached. For practical, computational reasons, active region numbers continue to have only four digits. Therefore, the sequence of numbers is 9998, 9999, 0000, 0001, and so on. Active region number 10030, for example, is AR0030. This region will often simply be referred to as region number 30, with 10030 implied.
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Paul,
I think that PIPP, designed for lucky imaging crowd, can do animated gifs. The creator says it can be enjoyed with WINE.
https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/
David
Comet spectroscopy
JWST has been looking at the coma of C/2017 K2.
Will be interesting to see the results!
Likewise – negative for a PR Her outburst (8 May, 21:48 UT)
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