[BAA Comets] Project Alcock - new tutorial

[Roger Dymock]

Good afternoon all,

I have uploaded a new tutorial, 'CCD Astrometry and Photometry of faint comets', to the Project
Alcock website at
http://www.britastro.org/projectalcock/CCD%20Astrometry%20and%20Photometry%20of%20faint%20comets.htm

This overcomes the limitation of FoCAs not being able to handle stacked images. Measurements cannot
thus be sent to the Spanish Group but can be forwarded to the Minor Planet Centre (nuclear mags from
Astrometrica), sent to Jonathan Shanklin and uploaded to COBS (total mags).

So what is a 'faint comet' as far as this procedure is concerned? I would suggest it is one that is
barely or not visible in a single image but shows up quite clearly in a stack of images. I can't
define an actual magnitude as that depends on your telescope and camera combination and atmospheric
conditions.

Being able to measure the total, Visual Equivalent Magnitude, of such comets will allow their
lightcurves to be extended even further than we are able to do so utilising the method described in
'CCD Astrometry and Photometry' at
http://www.britastro.org/projectalcock/CCD%20Astrometry%20and%20Photometry.htm

My thanks to Richard Miles for his help with this.

Should the opportunity arise please give the procedure a try and let me know how you get on.

Regards

Roger Dymock
Email: roger.dymock at ntlworld.com
Tel: 023 92647986
Skype: rogerdymock67 or
Skype: rjvdymock
Project Alcock http://www.britastro.org/projectalcock/