COMET NEAR DOUBLE CLUSTER

Location:  Front deck, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time:  January 23, 2020 1730-2200.

Weather:  Unseasonably warm at beginning to bitter cold towards the end.  Mostly clear, some breeze to no breeze, 2C at 1730hrs, -2C at 2200hrs, 80% humidity.  New Moon tomorrow, so very dark skies.  Bay of Fundy roaring, waves crashing all evening.  Days are getting longer, didn't get completely dark till after 1815hrs.

Equipment:  Canon Rebel T3 attached to 80 mm ED/APO at prime focus.  Images processed with DeepSkyStacker and PhotoShop.

Attendance:  David McCashion.

Objective:  To capture an image of celestial objects on one of the few clear nights we have had in many weeks.

Report:

• Set up around sun-down, well before dark, as the days are getting longer.  Venus was very high and bright, in the evening twilight.  Set up and was able to align the scope on Deneb, one of the great square of Pegasus stars and Venus.  Took many images of Venus and a video in order to produce a good image of our sister planet.
• Viewed and imaged Betelgeuse in the south east.  It is still noticeably dimmer than it used to be.
• Made an attempt to image Comet C/2017 T2 Panstarrs, which is halfway from the brighter stars in Perseus, and the W of Cassiopeia, next to the Perseus Double Cluster.  At this point, around 1830, comet was in a position, that the telescope could not locate it, because of how high it was in the sky.  Needed to wait till the comet moved out of that area of the sky, westward.
• Looked for some other objects to image, including the Rosette Nebula and the Witch's Head Nebula, around the Orion area of sky, but instead, chose to look for and image the huge galaxy, M31, which was not far from the comet.

Messier objects 31 and 110.  Single shot, 30 second, ISO 1600.

• Was surprised to see that, by 2045 hrs, comet had moved to a location that the telescope could reach.  Took twenty images for 16 minutes of exposure time and stacked them.

Single shot image, 45 second, ISO 6400.  Overexposed to better show the comet.

Image is 20x45 second images, ISO 1600 stacked for 16 minutes of exposure.

•  Some notes on Comet T2 Panstarrs:  It's now approaching Earth, and is still outside of Mars orbit.  The comet will be closest to the Sun (Perihelion) on May 4th, 2020, which will place it halfway between Earths' and Venuses orbit.  At Aphelion (farthest from Sun) the comet will be 9,786 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun.  This makes its orbital period of 342,399 years, meaning it won't be close to Earth again for 342, 399 years.  Info from heavens-above.com.
• One very bright falling star was seen at 2050hrs.  It burned up, shining brightly for an instant leaving a smoke trail.  Came almost straight down, high in the north western sky.  Looked like it might have hit the ground nearby.