Location: Prince of Wales, NB, Canada
Date Time: June 18, 2018 0310-0450hrs
Weather: No wind, mostly clear but hazy, 8C with humidity of 72%. Few bugs.
Attendance: David McCashion
Equipment: Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO with Canon Rebel T3 attached at prime focus. Images processed with PhotoShop.
Objective: To image comets C/2020 T2 Palomar (10.7) in Bootes and Comet 7P Pons-Winnecke (10.5) in Aquarius. Both comets are moving away from Earth, but seem to maintaining their brightness.
Report:
- Set up scope and aligned on Arcturus. Not many bright stars in the western sky at this time. Only 3 hours 10 minutes of dark skies beginning at 1150pm and ending at 301am, according to a weather website. The Moon was at first quarter and was below the western horizon at observing time, giving nice, dark skies.
- Easily found Comet T2 Palomar, low in the western sky, to the lower right of the main Bootes, kite-like asterism. Took many images and stacked 7 of them. The images were 15 second with set at ISO 1600.
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| Low in the west, 7 images stacked for 1min 46 seconds exposure, uncropped. |
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| 30 sec, ISO 6400, cropped and enhanced. |
- The teapot of Sagittarius is low in the south at observing time, just over the treetops. Took an image of bright globular cluster Messier 22(mag 5.5), located just over the teapot.
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| Twilight was starting to become a serious factor. Un-cropped, 20 second, ISO 3200. |
- According to a weather website, astronomical twilight starts at 301am. By the time I was set up and facing the low south eastern horizon(410am), where comet 7p was located, the sky was washed out in twilight. Even after many long exposure images and processing, I could not confirm a capture of the comet in the images.
- Imaged the south-eastern sky, including Jupiter, Saturn and Fomalhaut. Comet 7P was about 3/5 of the way to Fomalhaut, from Jupiter, making it quite low in the sky. This comet is proving to be a difficult capture because of the timing of it's appearance(early morning) and it's location in the sky. According to Richard Hinckley Allen, in his book Star Names Their Lore and Meaning, "Fomalhaut, from the Arabic Fum al Hut, the Fish's Mouth..."
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| Single shot, f/5, 6 second, ISO 1600, focal length 23mm |
- By 0420hrs twilight was really starting to brighten up the sky and the morning song birds were singing, squawking, and chirping away.
- Seen many satellites, with some passing through the camera view-screen as I was focusing. A few more airplanes flying by now also, as the pandemic air traffic seems to be rebounding somewhat. No shooting stars were seen.
