COMET C/2020 A2 IWAMOTO

Location:  Front deck, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time:  January 27, 2020    0300-0630hrs

Weather:  No wind to slight breeze, some passing clouds, humidity 91%, 0C, lots of dew.  Owls hooting whole time.

Attendance:  David McCashion.

Equipment:   Canon Rebel T3 attached to Canadian Telescopes 80 mm telescope at prime focus.  Images stacked with DeepSky Stacker and processed on Photoshop.

Objective:  To image newly discovered, faint mag 12 Comet A2 Iwamoto which was supposed to be in Hercules, which is halfway up in the morning sky.

Report:

• Not many alignment stars easy to see in the west from the deck.  
• Imaged the huge Globular Custer, M31 in Hercules.  

Great Hercules Cluster or M13.  Single shot, 30 second, ISO 1600, cropped.

•  Comet A2 Iwamoto is in a part of the sky, to the south east of the brighter stars of Hercules.  It's brightness is a very faint mag 12, and according to heavens-above.com, is fairly close to Earth right now, at about 1.2 AU away.  Showing greenish, with no visible tail.  This is the faintest comet I've been able to image so far.

Image is 7x2min stacked, ISO 1600, uncropped.

Single Shot, ISO 6400, uncropped.  Image over-exposed to better show comet.

•  With Constellation Lyra nearby and first light happening later in the morning this time of year, had lots of time to get 15x45 second images of Planetary Nebula M57, otherwise known as The Ring Nebula.

15x45 second stacked, ISO 800, cropped.

• By 0630, summer constellation Scorpius was rising in the south east.
• Owls were hooting, intermittently through the whole observing session, which is a first for me.  I've heard owls hoot before, but not more than one at a time and not for that long.
• Seen many satellites and two meteors.  Falling stars were very fast, faint, short period, seen in the eastern sky, coming from the south west.