COMET IN PISCES

Location:  Back yard and Front deck, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time:  September 30, 2019 from 2015-2330hrs

Weather:  Clear, cool, no wind to slight breeze, 9c down to 1C, frost warning, 70% humidity.

Attendance:  David McCashion

Equipment:  Canadian Telescopes 80mm ED/APO with 32mm and 19mm eyepieces, 20x80 binoculars, Canon Rebel T3 with 18-55mm lens and using telescope at prime focus.  Processed images with DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop.

Objective:  To view and image Comet C/2018 W2 Africano, which was reported to be in Pisces by Heavens-above.com.

Report:

• Thanks to a message from fellow amateur astronomer, Ed O'Reilly, in Saint John, I was alerted to an International Space Station flyover at 2015hrs.  Went outside at this time, in the backyard,as the station was flying out of Ursa Major, heading east.  Very bright, Jupiter brightness, flying low for several minutes across the northern sky.  Most of the bright stars were out by now.  Impressive flyover, which Ed observed also from Saint John.  Ed though the station looked jewel-like.
• Comet was supposed to be in Pisces, and the constellation wasn't high enough to view and image until after 2100hrs.  By then it was nicely placed in an easy viewing area of the eastern sky, slightly to the south.
•  Set up scope on the front deck, around 2130hrs, and aligned it on Jupiter, Saturn, Altair and Iota Piscium
• Viewed Jupiter, Saturn, M11 and M15 with scope and 32mm eyepiece.  
• M11 or The Wild Duck Cluster was a very bright cloud in the eyepiece.  Couldn't  resolve any stars in it, and thought it looked more like a galaxy, or nebula.
• M15 was a much fainter cluster which also looked more like a galaxy, at this low power.
• Located the comet almost exactly where heaven-above.com predicted it to be.  Took 30 images of 30 second exposures.  The stacked image shows a 20 minute path of the comet.  Once again this Comet is moving quickly across the sky.  Took one two minute exposure to reveal more of the coma.  Seems to have a big, wide tail.  Looked for comet, visually, with 32mm eyepiece and couldn't see it.  Tried higher magnification with a much better quality eyepiece in the 19mm.  Confirmed a sighting of the faint comet.  It was a dark patch that really stood out better with averted vision.  Dark, brightening towards the center, large by not huge.

Thirty 30 second images stacked.  ISO 6400, camera using telescope at prime focus.  Streak is showing a 20 minute path of the comet.

Single, 2 minute image which shows the coma better and shows a big tail moving up and to the left, away form the comet nucleus.

•  After viewing and imaging Comet Africano, I tried looking for comet with 20x80 binoculars, mounted on a tripod, but couldn't find it.  Did locate it visually in telescope with 19mm eyepiece.

• Tried imaging the area of sky around the comet, to show where it was in the sky, with a larger field of view, but found that that area of sky so full of stars, was hard to tell one from the other.  I find Cassiopeia hard to image for this reason as well.  The tell-tale asterism stars blend in with all the background stars, which seem to be of almost equal brightness.
• Located and viewed M31, M110 and M32, which were high overhead at approximately 2315hrs.  The massive, bright Andromeda Galaxy was huge in the 19mm eyepiece, with it's lesser companions crowding the field of view.  Very impressive sight at low power.
•  Located and viewed M34, in Perseus.  A bright, open cluster of random shape.  My first time observing this Messier object.
• Viewed two shooting stars directly, and many others out of the corner of my eye.  Extremely fast and faint.  Didn't see many satellites, but some did show up in images.