MORNING COMET SEARCH

Location:  Front yard, Little Lepreau, NB

Date Time:  Feb 9, 2019 0500-0550hrs

Weather:  Temps dropping, gusty winds increasing.  Mostly clear, to partly cloudy, -6C with reported windchill of -14C, bitter cold.  Winds gusting from the SW approximately 60 kph, humidity at 94%.  Strong enough to blow tripod over!

Equipment:  Canon Rebel with 18-55mm lens, 20x80 binoculars.

Attendance:  Myself

Objective:  To view and image Comet Iwamoto C/2018 Y1 which was reported by Sky & Telescope magazine to be in Leo, and approaching binocular visibility.  It has been reported that this comet is a "fast mover", crossing the sky at 5 degrees/day.

Report:  

• Leo was high in the Western sky, with the reported location of the Comet lower, less then halfway above the horizon, moving towards Regulus.

Focal Length 25mm, f/4, ISO 1600, 30 sec.

• Jupiter rising, low in the SE.
• Took many images to help locate comet, but high winds made long exposure imaging difficult.  Comet did not turn up in view screen, but after processing, it may have been located in more zoomed in image.

Focal length 53mm, ISO 1600, f/4, 30 sec.

• Comet is very hard to see, in the image, but this is the general area where it should be.  Faint smudge might be the comet, which means it's about a degree east of where it's supposed to be according to the map.  Other reports indicate that the comet is a fast mover...moving about 5 degrees a day, which means that it probably wont be exactly where you look for it.
• Scanned the area thoroughly with 20x80 binos, before and after high level thin clouds passed.  Could not locate the comet with binos.
• No shooting stars were seen and one Iridium Flare was seen heading north, peaking in brightness straight over-head.