[BAA Comets] C/2014 E2 (Jacques)

[Andrew Robertson]

Very timely Nick and an excellent image, although I've had visual views in
my 15 x 70 and 28 x 110 binoculars I hadn't managed to get one of my big
guns on it yet despite several attempts. With a good forecast several of us
met up at Seething (Norwich AS) last night. I took my 18" (portable)
dobsonian and set up to get a good horizon in the NE. The forecast wasn't as
solid as predicted and with worsening conditions people started packing up
at 1am. I was last man standing, desperate for a window, I could see Capella
but nothing below it so started packing up at 1.30am. I'd taken the finders
and shroud off and was just about to take the top box off when it started
clearing so quickly put the finders back on.

21mm Ethos in (x98, 1 deg FOV) wow! stunning view so bright and a decent
size. Steve Hubbard was with me and really pleased he'd stayed behind with
me. The core was bright with a larger fainter outer halo and there was a
stellar nucleus. Upping the power (13mm Ethos, x158) and it just got better.
The halo was generally uniform around the core except that we both thought
it was slightly larger or more extended above it (inverted view of course).
The halo also looked slightly grainy. It must have been 2am or just gone by
now so at it's highest in a fully dark sky which was getting better. I then
tried the comet filter expecting to kill it, wow again - even better! We
spent a good 20 mins swapping views between comet filter and no filter all
with the 13mm Ethos and we both agreed the view and detail was superior with
the filter. The nucleus was similar but the outer halo was larger and more
prominent which did surprise me. It was grainy or mottled and there were
some dark patches in it. For just one fleeting moment I thought I glimpsed a
thin extension to the left but nothing afterwards. I note your image shows a
very thin tail to the right so perhaps I did glimpse it. A camera exceeds
here but otherwise I can honestly say the visual views we had were superior
to your excellent image.

Really enjoy this, still on a high.

Andrew  

-----Original Message-----
From: comets-disc-bounces at britastro.org
[mailto:comets-disc-bounces at britastro.org] On Behalf Of Nick James
Sent: 03 August 2014 09:33
To: BAA Comets discussion list
Subject: [BAA Comets] C/2014 E2 (Jacques)

Morning all,

I had my first really good look at this comet this morning. It is now
reasonably high in a dark sky from here and this morning was very
transparent. My processed image is here:

http://www.britastro.org/cometobs/2014e2/2014e2_20140803_0212_ndj.html

I've tried a rotational gradient on a high SNR stack of unsaturated images
and this seems to show some interesting activity in the inner coma (see the
colourful inset). The rotation is centred on the coma photocentre as denoted
by the single black pixel in the inset. Has anyone else been doing this?

The comet was easy in 11x80 bins and I also saw quite a few Perseids so
definitely worth getting up for.

Nick.
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