Attention Astronomers!

[jhn.holgate]

Comet Lovejoy is currently in our southern skies and looking very nice! A quick photo reveals a bright green nucleus which is not evident looking through the eyepiece. It's not quite a naked eye comet - at least I'm not convinced I can see it, but it's quite obvious with a 4" refractor.

Info and maps here: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/binocular-comet-lovejoy-heading-c2014-q2-lovejoy-1211142/

Here's a photo - actually 4 photos aligned on the comet and stacked in DSS. You can see by the elongated stars just how fast this thing is moving. It moves noticeably from frame to frame on my photos which are 4 minutes apart. It's actually moving towards about 10'oclock in the photo. Comet 'tails' are always blown away from the sun regardless of which way the comet is heading.

Pentax K50 through an ED80 F7.5 refractor

Also in the sky atm is comet Panstarrs which has just gone past NGC55 (a galaxy in Sculptor). It's very hard to see in my 4" refractor, I only saw it when I took some photos and magnified the image. NGC55 is the obvious silver sliver in this photo with the comet a little directly above it.

Pentax K50 & SMC 50mm lens.

[SoutherlyBuster]

Cool John, so judging by the fact that I could see the commet in your picture taken with the 50mm lens that we could see it with a pair binoculars then?

[jhn.holgate]

Not Comet Panstarr Norm - I couldn't see it in my 4" refractor. The pic was probably a several minute exposure and thus pics up stuff way fainter than we can see. Comet Lovejoy on the other hand should easily be visible in binoculars, although it will probably appear like a large fuzzy ball.

I'm always amazed at what the camera can see. Here's a single 5 minute exposure through my 80mm refractor at ISO 800 - even in a big telescope, I've never seen color or this much detail. But put a camera on a small scope and wow!

[andy666]

Wow John, that last picture is amazing. I'm stealing that for my background.

[Clive]

Will have a look and see if I can see it tonight, thanks for the heads up John. Nice pics

if you have a basic planetarium program or a goto scope you can plug in the exact location from here, http://www.livecometdata.com/comets/c20 ... t-lovejoy/

Let you know how I went tomorrow morning

[Chook]

That is awesome John!!!! Very impressive shots.

[Clive]

After all that I got sidetracked at 1 am when the computer crashed in the observatory, too tired to sort it out, just covered the scopes and left, probably a cable pulled from somewhere. Went to bed and forgot about the comet....

[jhn.holgate]

Spent another session last night with the camera and got some more pics of the comet - still coming to grips with exposure time v unguided tracking v noise reduction etc etc.

[jhn.holgate]

A few more pics from last night. Comet Lovejoy, Tuc 47 (a globular cluster - which is a ball of hundreds of thousands of stars relatively closely spaced....um, maybe a light year apart if I remember correctly whereas our closest star is 4 light years away. So if you lived on a planet that orbited a star in a globular cluster, the night sky would be incredibly bright....assuming you weren't fried by all the radiations and nasty stuff coming off all those close by stars). And the Grus Quartet - which are 4 galaxies in the constellation of Grus approx 70 - 80 million light years away.

[RobG]

I used to do a bit of astronomy. Here's one of my galaxy shots. Got rid of most of my gear now, just the mount still left to sell, but keeping my little 18" Dobsonian telescope. Too light polluted here now for anything serious.

Have seen C/2014 Q2 a couple of times now, getting brighter slowly. Finding it in the light polluted skies of Sydney can be tough.

Cheers - Rob

[jhn.holgate]

Nice pic of NGC253! And HOLY Cow!! You didn't muck about buying crappy gear!! Makes my stuff look like I got it out of a weeties box. Can't trade you a few Ozone Methods for the mount?

[RobG]

I've been into it for years, slowly upgrading over time. I've had virtually every telescope mount out there at one time or another! I used to be involved a lot in the UK with astronomy and media (TV and radio) with the Campaign for Dark Skies. Moved here '07, but into -very ironic - bad light pollution!

I still have the mount (AP1200 GTO) - it's for sale on Ice in Space! ($8.5k). Also got the Pentax 75 SDHF Petzval apo guidescope which is a nice imaging scope in its own right, but I'll probably keep that. Might even mount it on my 18" Dob!

The NGC253 shot was 1hr luminance, 20mins each R, G, B with an STL11000M. I have a bunch of shots still saved on the computer here, but most are too big to upload!

Cheers - Rob

[jhn.holgate]

C'mon...full set of Methods (I'll even steal Clive's 2.3m)!...how can you say no?

yeah, probably quite a bit of light pollution around there. Not an easy setup to throw in the back of a hatchback and take into the hills. I imagine the 18" Dob's not real small either. I once pulled the front and back seats out of a ford fairlane to fit my 8" f7 newt for a trip up to Arkaroola (before there was an observatory there - I think). Don't remember seeing an awful lot of things with it on the trip. I'm lucky to be about 28km out of a city of 100,000 - it's reasonably dark here for the most part. I might even get myself a 6" refractor later this year - won't be able to afford an APO though darn it, one day......