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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.
I wanted to enjoy the comet through binos – and I did, so I didn’t take the scope out. But on getting home I noticed the comet was accessible from my yard. Here’s a single 500ms frame taken with the Hyperstar. A very bright sky at 0247 BST, but you can nonetheless make out the bifurcation of the tail clearly (no calibration performed – I would need a new set of calibr frames for these settings!)
Yes. I do really like that pic. The Sony 85mm FE lens is very good. The other image is APS-C crop and digi zoom!
Hi Brandx. You might have uploaded the image to the site, but not embedded it into your post. You can also just attach the image file.
Nice Bill! I am at 55deg N and have the same problem. Isn’t it notable that this comet has received almost no coverage in the mainstream press. I wonder if there has been a Y4 effect.
I agree with Nick – get out there, and perhaps pray the evening before for good weather. The object is clearly visible to the naked-eye as a point object (you can pick it up by just scanning the sky by eye in the right area), but through binoculars it is transformed into the classic comet appearance. Leaves a real impression. I used 10 x 50 bins which framed it nicely.
Fantastic comet through binoculars. Well worth getting up for. Thank goodness it was clear in the NE!
The provenance seems legit… C/2020 F3 from the ISS
Yes 🙂 , I noticed he used his superfast 11in RASA. The good thing is that light gathering capacity isn’t the limiting factor here. It’s the weather that has to play ball – as you say.
I agree. I didn’t post a link to the animated image series because such things appear to be strangely unpopular.
A nice capture here [external link]
https://twitter.com/Komet123Jager/status/1279303106728275970
There may be a patch of clear weather up here Mon morning…
