[BAA Comets] C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)

[ndj]

I hope that all comet observers are getting a chance to observe this 
nice object. It is now observable from the UK and nice images are coming 
in although these are not yet matching the images from remote telescopes 
in Australia. The Moon will be a problem for the next couple of weeks so 
some of the best UK images will probably start appearing in mid January.

The BAA is updating the image archive daily and there are now almost 100 
images available from all over the world. You should regularly have a 
look at the page:

http://www.britastro.org/cometobs/2014q2/

If you are a BAA member it is best to be logged in to the site since you 
will see updates earlier. This is because our pages are served to logged 
in members without having to wait for the normal cache updates.

I've been observing the comet using the iTelescope telescopes at Siding 
Spring, particularly the T12 instrument that has a 3.9x2.6 deg FoV. It's 
interesting to compare the tail on Dec 19th and today in these two images:

http://www.britastro.org/cometobs/2014q2/2014q2_20141219_ndj.jpg
http://www.britastro.org/cometobs/2014q2/2014q2_20141230_1433_ndj.jpg

I've also imaged the comet from the UK using a Megrez 72 and Canon 600D 
DSLR:

http://www.britastro.org/cometobs/2014q2/2014q2_20141228_2232_ndj.jpg

This image is nothing like the quality of the remote images but I feel 
much more "ownership" of it and expect to get a lot better later in 
January. I've also seen the comet in 10x50 bins despite the low altitude 
and light pollution. It was surprisingly easy and, if you haven't looked 
yet, it is worth a try. Interestingly I also imaged the comet from here 
yesterday night and despite what appeared to be better conditions the 
ion tail appears much fainter.

As always, please submit your observations to cometobs at britastro.org. 
Denis Buczynski is doing a great job of updating the archive but please 
help us by using the correct filename format, i.e.:

2014q2_20141228_2232_ndj.jpg

where "20141228_2232" is the date and time and "ndj" is the observer name.

Very many thanks to Terry for finding yet another nice object.

Nick.