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Hello Mike,I presume that you have looked at the information about this comet (discovery circumstances and subsequent development) in Gary Kronk’s Vol 1 pages 369-373 Cometography. This is the “bible” when it comes to researching past comets. If you have not got these pages let me know.It was an extrordinary comet with a description (from Cometography) from an observer in Sussex on 1680 Dec 20 afterthe comet had emerged form the sun’s glare in the southwest that the tail extended to the zenith and was broader than a rainbow. On the same day John Flamsteed said the comet appeared as a beam of light about the width of the moon extending stright up from the horizon. It had become visible before daylight had ended.
Denis Buczynski Secretary Comet Section
BAA
Nice image of this comet showing that dust trail edge on. With ccd imaging we are seeing more of these cometary features which were only rarley imaged when photography was the main detector. The number of comets imaged recently with “antitails” is another aspect of this more sensitive means of recording comets.
Your comment about seeing the comet in the NW when it gets dark made me smile. It does not get dark here in Tarbatness again until mid August at 58d North latitude! I look forward to seeing other images of this and other comets by those who do have dark skies.
Denis Buczynski
Since posting this discovery announcement at the end of January, both Nick James and myself have been observing this bright Supernova using multicolour photometry. We have been pleasantly surprised by the number of observing opportunities that we have had during these winter months at opposite ends of the east coast. The weather has been very mobile and clear spells have been frequent, but sometimes fleeting. We hope other observers have had similar experiences over the last few months. Our observations are shown an the attached lightcurve which is from the AAVSO database (the crosses are NDJ observations and the squares are DGB). The SN is currently very red and we have not transformed our measurements to exactly match V and R hence the bias between our two sets of observations. This supernova is at an interesting stage of its development and we would encourage more observations from BAA observers.
