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My observing has been quite badly affected by lockdown. I have a yard that is light polluted and affords access to only a very limited part of the sky. Normally I would go to a observing spot closer to the sea, which is much darker and has better sky access, but I have been wary during the stringent lockdown periods – even though it is just myself at the scope.
Of course I am not saying this is significant disruption in the grand scheme of things (before there is a pile-on).
Congratulations, Jonathan. I think we should use the area and volume of the glacier as the ‘in-house’ BAA standards for the dimensions of minor bodies. Probably not very stable standards, mind… Better stick with Giraffes and the principality that is Wales.
Conditions in NE England have been terrible over the past week: lots of mist and fog. If the Met Office forecast is right, there may be the odd break over the next few days. I’ll be sure to do measurements if conditions permit.
An image of the nova. Lots of stars around here!
Image details: Centre RA 22h 22m 32.3s, Dec +50° 23′ 42.5″; Pos Angle +316° 35.2′; FL 196.3 mm; 2.52″/Pixel
Not good for solar, but at least – after a time – you’d be left with a Milky Way leading up to the observatory.
About 3deg from Cor Caroli in CVn, for those who don’t speak NGC or can’t be bothered to look it up 😉
I took images last night through a V filter and measured a calibrated stack in Maxim (AAVSO X25582AO)
N Cas 2020 measured 11.548 CCD-V
REF 112 set 11.186
CHK 126 measured 12.599
Very nice, Robin. Is there very much in the literature on the spatial distribution of the various components in comets longitudinally through an apparition? If only bright-ish comets coming close-ish to Earth were more frequent…
Excellent, thanks Stewart. I’m waiting on clear skies to acquire a low res spectrum of the object. At this brightness, it should be doable with my scope.
Thanks Robin, I’ll do as you advise. Here’s a not so egregiously black-clipped image. I’ll have a look at the pixel brightness values to see if I can get anything reliable from the green pane.
For some reason the uploaded pic has come out a bit dark. It is, I suspect, something to do with the fact that I saved the image first as a png in Maxim. The file was still a bit large though, so I opened that in Photoshop and did a web compression. I’ll have a look this eve at putting something slightly better up. I also need to test whether the boxcar or the bayer pane setting for flat calibration works best with this particular calibration frame set.
Anyway, I was keen to have a look at the nova! I am actually planning to revisit low res spectroscopy with the StarAnalyser in a much more rigorous way: dark and flat calibration and then instrument response correction using a standard star at a similar altitude.
Good effort though, Paul. I look forward to seeing the definitive result when conditions have improved.
A fascinating object. Friends and passers-by have been out for a look and have been most impressed. I have found that non-regular stargazers, with just help to point them in the right direction, are able to pick it up with the naked eye and notice the fuzziness reaching upwards. Most people favour the view through binoculars (10 x 50s) rather than the telescope (200mm SCT, 32mm Plossl). I am pleased to have been able to pick up the ion tail with just single frames with a DSLR! A greenish tint is also appearing in the coma, as highlighted by Nick James in a recent email.
Thanks Jeremy (although I’m slightly disturbed by the juxtaposition of marmalade and cornflakes). On a hilarious note, please read this article published yesterday:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8523421/Has-star-sign-wrong-along.html
Apparently NASA discovered Oph just a few years ago. And what exactly has C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) got to do with anything in relation to the rest of the article? A hoot.
I’m assuming you are looking for freeware or something not too expensive. Have a look at PIPP.
https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/
Maxim does this sort of thing, but it is expensive.
