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Hi David. I loaded your image into Aladin (a very useful free program that you can download for free from here) and marked the position of the comet at the time of your observation (the pink cross). The faint fuzz is certainly in the right sort of position but it is difficult to be certain since it is so close to the detection limit and it could be an artefact. For very faint objects like this it is worth getting two stacks separated by 30 mins or so. When the two images are blinked any faint comets become obvious from their motion.
Anyway, this is certainly a very good attempt. Please keep trying to image this object.
Nick.
This object has been redesignated 1I/ʻOumuamua in MPEC 2017-V17. The “1I” is a new designation and it signifies that this is the first confirmed interstellar object to be detected transiting our Solar System. The pronunciation of the name is (ō’u-mu’-a-mu’-ă) and, according to the MPEC, the name is of “Hawaiian origin and reflects the way this object is like a scout or messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us”. This is probably the first of many interstellar objects that will be discovered over the coming decades given the sensitivity of modern sky surveys.
David, yes this could be a nice comet for us since it is very well placed at its brightest. I expect it might get to tenth mag around the end of the year when the comet is racing through the circumpolar constellations. See the attached chart. We already have a few images of it in the archive and would welcome observations as it moves in to perihelion.
Nick.
I’ve just got up and processed the rest of the frames. Here is the run through the night. The data gets noisy at the end as the sky brightens and the spike just before 0.7 is not real. It looks to be a cosmic ray hit on the CCD adjacent to the star.
I’ve been following this star for the last few hours. It is a lot brighter than its catalogue mag (r=13.79) but doesn’t appear to be doing much.
Its now just on its way out of the C3 field. There’s a nice timelapse movie showing the complete pass here.
Yes, it will be interesting to watch it pass through. SOHO is getting very old now and is living on borrowed time. What will we do when it is gone?
There is indirect and rather weak evidence that some other objects may have interstellar origins but A/2017 U1 (now demoted from cometary status) has direct evidence from its strongly hyperbolic orbit. We’ve never seen anything with this kind of orbit before.
Also, in the “how far south can you see from the Canary Islands” here’s a picture of the top half of Crux on the horizon taken from La Palma.
I have a load of frames of the southern sky taken from a beach in Queensland but I’ve never got around to processing most of them since there was a lot of drifting cloud. They were all taken with a camera on a fixed tripod so the exposures are short. I have a set of Crux and I’ve uploaded one frame here. It did get a nice set of the LMC and this is the only set I have every processed. The final version is here. Timelapses of the rest are here.
Indeed some fantastic images. I particularly like the skyscape ones.
Robin,
Many thanks for all of your help with this. An interesting result and a very steep learning curve for me!
Nick.
We’ve received the calibrated 2D spectrum which was obtained by Richard Miles using the FTN but can’t make much sense of it. One of the FITS files is attached and if anyone has any insight it would be appreciated. According to the FITS header I think the left hand end corresponds to 474.2 nm and the scale is 0.3511 nm/pix. This would put H-alpha at around X=518 but there is no sign of anything there. I need to delve into the FLOYDS documentation but if anyone has any ideas I’d be very pleased to hear them!
Richard Miles tells me that the 2.0m FTN has acquired a spectrum using the FLOYDS spectrograph. The raw data will be processed after the telescope closes for the night. Richard sent me the attached image showing the raw spectrum which doesn’t mean a lot to me at the moment but presumably will make more sense once it is rectified and calibrated. Many thanks to Richard for arranging this.
There’s an interesting article on spectral confirmation of novae here. Any comments from the spectroscopists on this forum would be very useful.
Thanks Robin. If you do get a clear slot it would be worth a try. George imaged it again last night and the object has brightened to around mag 16. Richard Miles has a spectrograph job on the 2.0-m FTN which is currently scheduled for this morning.
Andrew,
They do not remain valid and they probably were not valid even when Wooley made them. I enjoy being under a dark sky and observing from dusk to dawn but where I live the sky is yellow and so I prefer to observe from indoors with a remote telescope (either my own one down the end of the garden) or one on a different continent. To claim that someone who spends a night under the stars is any more or less of an astronomer than someone who has set up and uses an automated telescope system is plainly rubbish. I would extend that to people who use remote telescopes and process and analyze their results.
Life moves on. We all have our own preferences as to how we do our astronomy and all are equally valid. We are amateurs after all so we can decide what we want to do.
Nick.
James,
Thanks. I’ve just got back to the hotel in Kearney. We had quite a long trip to Tryon this morning since the weather prediction for around here was not good. From the messages I’ve received it looks as if many BAA people saw it from various places (Idaho, Jackson and Casper and further down the track).
Two years until the next one!
Nick.
