Date Time: September 10, 2018 0400-0550hrs
Weather: Clear, a very cool, hand numbing 10 C, no wind, no bugs, and lots of dew, which ended up freezing to the table.
Equipment: Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO with 32mm eyepiece, Canon Rebel Xsi with 75-300mm lens and attached to telescope at prime focus. 20x80 binos. Images processed on Photobucket.com
Attendance: David McCashion from Little Lepreau and Ed from West Saint John.
Objective: To view and image Comet 21P, after Ed confirmed and reported a sighting on the morning of Sept 9, 2018 at 0530 hrs. He said it was near M 37 and he could see a tail in his 8" Dob.
Report:
- First set up binoculars to scan where comet was supposed to be. Seen a bright fuzzy patch that I initially thought was the comet, but it turned out to be M37. After reviewing images, found the comet to be much fainter, but, thankfully near the brightest open cluster in Auriga, M37.
- Could not confirm a visual sighting of the comet in either the binos or through the telescope. By the time I realized, that it wasn't the comet I was looking at, first light had already started. Tried looking for it anyways, but couldn't see it next to the bright Messier object.
- Seen 1 satellite and 4 shooting stars, with one being very bright, in the Eastern sky, going straight north.
Images:
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| Camera with 75-300mm lens, zoomed out. |
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| Camera attached to telescope at prime focus, zoomed in. 46 second time elapsed. |
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| Longer, 90 second exposure, over-exposed to show more of the comets' coma and tail. |
Notes:
- Ed and I both searched the area of sky (from our own respective homes) south of Capella on the evening of Sept 4, looking for the faint magnitude 7 comet to no avail, where it was reported to be on Heavens-above.com. We thought that maybe the comet had dimmed to the point where our equipment couldn't pick it up.
