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I thought I’d have a go imaging it as it got dark here and here is a short movie showing it moving rapidly northwards. Each frame is a 60s exposure.
David, Thanks for the head’s up and the observation. It is always fun to track down these fairly large NEOs. Since it will have significant motion against the star background it is also a good check on your timing accuracy if you do some astrometry.
I suspect that given the cost and behaviour of the LCD shutter that you are probably better off using the DSLR in video mode. In that case you can get a direct measurement of angular velocity and time from the video stream. I have done analysis of DSLR stills for various events using Astrometrica and it is hard work to get anything really useful from the images. With video it is much easier to extract the path and angular velocity and also much easier to eliminate other things like glinting satellites. This image is a stack from 1/25s video frames. The small gaps in the trail correspond to the very short dead time between exposures of the sensor. I’ve posted some of the individual frames here.
The coma profile for the past few nights shows that it is much more diffuse this morning and I think we are witnessing its final days.
It continues to fade. I made it 9.4 earlier today. It is still there though and there are no apparent signs of disruption so we might get another outburst soon. Keep an eye on this object at every possible opportunity.
Hi Paul. I’m there next weekend and will measure it. We currently have no idea as to its value but would like to find a good home for it. These has been some interest from a few people so I’ll be in touch once we have decided how to procede.
It was cloudy here last night so no data from me but it does appear to be fading if you look at the latest estimates here. My news article on the front page was clearly the kiss of death! Michael Jäger reports no sign of the tail last night in deep images obtained on July 21.05. David Levy’s famous quote about comets: “Comets are like cats, they have tails and do what they want” is quite appropriate I think. We just need to keep observing and see what happens next.
The comet continues to brighten. There is a news item here which explains more.
Indeed. It is a really nice comet tonight. Here is my image. I get an integrated magnitude of 8.49 and a coma diameter of almost 6 arcmin.
Nick.
This is indeed an exciting new area of astronomy which we should promote but, as pointed out by many, the techniques used have been developed mostly by the VS community over many years. It seems to me that the solution most likely to work is to set up an EP subsection of the VSS and give the coordinator plenty of autonomy to set up and promote EP observing programmes. This shouldn’t be too much of an extra load on the VSS Director but it will have the benefit of starting off with the significant resources that the VSS already has. If, after a few years, the EP programme is vigorous we should reconsider whether to make it a stand-alone section.
This conjunction has certainly encouraged a lot of people to have a go at imaging this (currently) rather puny comet. Denis Buczynski has just updated our image archive and you can see the results for 21P here.
Very nice event. Not sure about the music though. Who’d have thought that the state of Russian roads and insurance companies would have led to such an increase in captures of these very bright events. Someone should be doing some stats.
That’s really sad news. Maurice was a great observer who always got into a field before anyone else did. I remember marvelling at his CCD images in the early days of the electronic era.
Peter – That’s a shame but, as others have said, we have constraints too and so it is not always possible to avoid a clash.
The other talks are now up on our website here.
David, Thanks for the heads up on this. I imaged it this morning using a widefield instrument so the trail is small but it is visible. The observation is here.
