All year long, astronomers have been writing about Comet ISON: will it sizzle or will it fizzle? I was chomping at the bit, waiting for the visual magnitude to brighten enough to try viewing this comet through my own telescope (shown on the right). Finally, the [...]]]>

Comet ISON October 6, 2013 by Jane Houston Jones

All year long, astronomers have been writing about Comet ISON: will it sizzle or will it fizzle? I was chomping at the bit, waiting for the visual magnitude to brighten enough to try viewing this comet through my own telescope (shown on the right). Finally, the weekend, a dark sky, comet magnitude and perfect weather all came together Saturday night, October 5th and Sunday morning, October 6th.

First, backtrack 16 years. I fondly recall the great comet of 1997 – Comet C/1995 O1, Comet Hale-Bopp, which ruled the skies for 18 months. When it passed perihelion on April 1, 1997, it was brighter than all stars in the sky except for Sirius. With its 50 degree long tails it spanned the evening sky, and was the talk of the town, the water cooler and even led the commute chatter among the passengers in my van pool. Everybody saw it. I sketched it. Astronomy clubs flourished with eager new stargazers. Telescopes were literally flying off the shelf. Then, two years after it faded from view, in April 1999, I observed Comet Hale-Bopp from Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback, through my 12.5-inch telescope, as it scooted in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was over 8 AU/700 million miles away, as far away as Saturn is from Earth. I’ve been remembering the anticipation then the excitement of Hale-Bopp while impatiently waiting for ISON.

Comet ISON’s magnitude is somewhere in the magnitude 10-11? range at the time of my Sunday morning sketch, tho’ all the sources I use show different magnitudes. On October 5, when I observed and made this little sketch these three sources I regularly use show different magnitudes. Magnitude 10.6 here. Magnitude 10.7 here. And magnitude 10 (or even brighter 9.something) here.

So for my observation, I thought it would be more interesting to show the magnitude of many of the the nearby stars I could see in my eyepiece. I used my 12.5-inch f/6.75 reflector and a 19mm Nagler Panoptic eyepiece for a magnification of 96x. Conditions were spectacular, very steady seeing at 5:00 am, and away from the the Zodiacal Light and Milky Way the limiting magnitude had been an impressive 6.5. I was able to see three 14.0 magnitude stars, two very near the comet. I tried higher and lower magnification (over 200x and under 50x) and couldn’t see the comet in any eyepiece over 125x. The sketch shows the comet a bit brighter than it really appeared. It was like an oval puff of barely-there cloud with a brighter condensed area, I assume was the coma. It was much larger than I was expecting. No tail visible. Can’t wait to observe and sketch it again on October 26th despite a big bright moon and November 2nd which should be a perfect moonless viewing night. Until then, I’m looking forward to hearing about more visible reports. Photos are great, but star-stuff hitting your eyes is the best!

Perihelion or bust!

One one side of the green van is the Imaging zone

On the other side of the green van is the visual observing zone

When the clear sky chart reads perfect, we can’t wait to get [...]]]> Observing report, dark sky weekend, October, 2009, Chuckwalla Bench

A perfect night begins with Earth's shadow climbing in the east

One one side of the green van is the Imaging zone

On the other side of the green van is the visual observing zone

When the clear sky chart reads perfect, we can’t wait to get out to our favorite dark sky observing site, Chuckwalla Bench. I wondered what would happen when Mojo started dabbling in the dark art of imaging. I’m the old fashioned alt-az dob girl, and now my hubby would be keeping warm at the star party with the heat from electonic power supplies and batteries. Poor me! I pouted (for only about a year or so) before I learned to love the dark arts, and we now happily observe and image with only our 1998 green Dodge Caravan separating “his” imaging zone and “her” visual observing zone.

New moon Saturday night in October 2009 was another perfect observing night in the Colorado desert of Southern California. Temperatures were in the 90′s before the sunset, and cooled to about 65 by 2 a.m. when we took a pre-dawn snooze. Humidity remained in the teens.

Last month we had a great time combining visual observing and imaging. On the “visual” side of the observing field Gary and I were struggling to confirm our main project for the night, the asteroid Juno. Mojo was imaging the same target, and a quick look at his Juno image confirmed the star fields we were looking at visually. It was a lot of fun!

This month Gary and I were hunting down NGC 7640, a pretty elongated barred spiral galaxy just 4 degrees to the south of the popular Blue Snowball planetary nebula. This mag 12 galaxy should have been easy to find but its low surface brightness made it a challenge. It took my 17.5-incher to provide a great view, and then Gary was able to see it in his 12.5 incher too. In my scope the long and narrow galaxy’s core seemed bright, long and twisted, and the spiral arms were visible as wisps off both edges. We called Mojo over for a look and he thought it would make a nice imaging project, which it did!

Next it was Mojo who suggested a target he had imaged would make a nice project for us push-to observers. NGC 7541 is called a “showpiece” galaxy group in the Night Sky Observers Guide in Pisces. Soon I had a gorgeous visual view of this pretty pair of galaxies in my telescope, and called Mojo over for a view.

The other benefit of Mojo’s new hobby is that I can “suggest” targets for him to image. Then I can use them in my What’s Up podcast series. I used 4 of his lovely images in October’s Podcast about the Andromeda Galaxy. See if you can spot them. Two are views of the Andromeda galaxy. One shows the whole galaxy, and the other shows the galaxy as a smudge — exactly as it looks in a modest visual telescope. The other two are Milky Way images, one showing a washed out Milky Way (what most people actually see) with Jupiter and the other is his very pretty image of M52 and the Bubble Nebula, some of our own Milky Way’s jewels.

So it is possible to combine imaging and visual observing, and I look forward to our next outing! I’m preparing my “Honey Do” list of imaging targets to “suggest” to Mojo already.