[BAA Comets] 46P now 6th magnitude

[David Swan]

Congrats Owen -

I went out with my 10 x 50 binos and couldn't spot it. I star hopped: Deneb Kaitos -> Tau Ceti -> Ups and 57 Ceti (pretty in binos) -> host star field. I confirmed that I was looking in the right place by comparing the 5 deg bino star field with the output of my planetarium app.

Using 1s exposures to prevent saturation by light pollution, I was able to pick it up with my Hyperstar though. A contrast with those Siding Spring images that I have been taking remotely!! See my member's page if interested.

David Swan

________________________________________
From: Comets-disc <comets-disc-bounces at lists.britastro.org> on behalf of Owen Brazell <o.brazell at btinternet.com>
Sent: 29 November 2018 14:43
To: BAA Comets discussion list
Subject: Re: [BAA Comets] 46P now 6th magnitude

I went out tonight in between the showers and in hazy skies to a local dark site and to my surprise found it was pretty easy in 11x70 binoculars as a large haze. It was difficult to determine any shape due to trying to hold binos steady in a cold brisk wind.

Owen

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From: Nick James<mailto:ndj at nickdjames.com>
Sent: 28 November 2018 17:59
To: BAA Comets discussion list<mailto:comets-disc at lists.britastro.org>
Subject: [BAA Comets] 46P now 6th magnitude

Hi all,

Denis Buczynski has been imaging this comet from 58 deg north latitude
so it is definitely observable from the UK when the weather co-operates.
A chart showing the comet's track through December is here:

https://www.britastro.org/node/16287

The attached is a single 180s Green filter exposure of 46P taken with
iTelescope T14 in New Mexico. This is a Tak 106mm FSQ with a 4x2.5
degree FoV. The image was reduced using comphot against UCAC-4 V mags. I
get a total magnitude of 6.1 with a coma diameter of 37 arcmin. This is
similar to the visual mags on COBS and with the result that David Swan
reported using iTel T9 and the same analysis tool a few days ago:

https://www.britastro.org/node/16500

I think this shows that comphot can give results that are consistent
with visual if you use the right instrument. I have imaging booked on
T14 every few days now up until mid December and so this will be an
interesting test of how well we can determine magnitudes of such a
diffuse object.

Please try to observe this object through December and consider using
comphot to analyze your images. You can download it from here:

https://www.britastro.org/node/11124

Nick.

</mailto:comets-disc at lists.britastro.org></mailto:ndj at nickdjames.com></https:></o.brazell at btinternet.com></comets-disc-bounces at lists.britastro.org>