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Friday, June 18, 2021

OBSERVING REPORT FOR JUNE 18, 2021

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.


Low in the west, 7 images stacked for 1min 46 seconds exposure, uncropped.

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.


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..."

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.


Friday, June 11, 2021

Comet C/2020 T2 Palomar

Location:  Prince of Wales, NB, Canada

Date Time:  June 11, 2021 0115-0300hrs

Weather:  No wind, hazy to partly cloudy to mostly cloudy, 6C, humidity 59%.

Attendance:  David McCashion

Equipment:  Canadian telescopes 80 ED/APO with a Canon Rebel xsi attached at prime focus.  Images processed with PhotoShop.

Objective:  To image comets C/2020 T2 Palomar(Mag10.5) in Bootes, Comet C/2020 R4 Atlas(Mag 11.5) in Leo and Comet 7P Pons-Winnecke(Mag10.6) in Aquarius, below Jupiter.  Comet magnitudes are from online reports.

Report:     

There was an annular solar eclipse early in the morning the day before, on June 10, 2021 around 0530 to 0700. 

Hazy conditions improved for about 30 minutes from about 0120hrs to about 0150hrs after which clouds slowly started to cover the whole sky. 

Imaged T2 Palomar, which was to the lower right of the main Bootes kite-like asterism.  Bootes was high in the western sky during observing.  Also imaged M3, which was nearby, with same camera and telescope configuration for a side by side comparison.

One minute exposure, ISO 6400.  Image cropped and enhanced.

Side by side comparison of images.  Same settings for both images.

Clouds moved in shortly after 2am.  Stayed for another hour to see if sky would clear an it didn't.

Seen several satellites, all moving north or south, and no shooting stars.

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