COMET NEAR THE DIPPER

Location:  Prince of Wales, NB, Canada

Date Time:  June 15, 2020 2145-0030hrs

Weather:  Partly cloudy to mostly clear, hazy, no wind, some ground fog later covering much of the sky except for due south, no dew, 8C, and almost no bugs.  Ed mentioned how it's rare to have the southern sky so perfectly clear, with the northern sky hazy/cloudy.  It's usually the other way around.

Attendance:  Edward O'Reilly, David McCashion

Equipment:  Ed's 15x70 binoculars, 80 ED/APO telescope, 19mm eyepiece, Canon t3 with 18-55mm lens and using telescope at prime focus.  Heaven-above.com used to help find comet and Photoshop to process images.

Objective:  To locate and view Comet C/2017 T2 Panstarrs which was reported to be approx. one degree from Phecda, one of the bowl stars in Ursa Major.

Report:

• Set up telescope before 2200 hrs, but it didn't get completely dark until just before 2300hrs.
• Leo was low in the western sky at first dark.  Aligned scope on Regulus and Denebola.  Imaged the Leo Triplet, which is located about two degrees below Chertan.
• Ursa Major was located high in the NW sky, almost perfect location for evening observing.  Imaged and observed with binoculars and telescope.  We noticed nebulosity around the big dipper asterism star Phacda, and could see something very near where the comet was located, but we could not confirm a visual sighting with the telescope or binoculars.  Phacda, according to Richard Hinckley Allen in his book Star Names Their Lore and Meaning, is magnitude 2.5, topaz yellow.  The star name derives from the Arabic word for thigh, Al Falidh.  Image reveals comet is slightly brighter than magnitude 10.6, bared spiral galaxy M109.

Single shot 20 second image with 18-55mm lens.

Single shot image, 30 second, ISO 6400.

•  Imaged the Whirlpool Galaxy/Messier 51, a bright spiral which is located below the handle of the big dipper.

Single shot 30 second image.  Cropped.

•  After midnight, Jupiter and Saturn started to rise, just above the treeline, in the East.  A spectacular sight.  We could see three moons of Jupiter, two to the left, and one to the right,in binoculars.  We tried for Saturn rings, but all we could see was a hint of ovalness.

Single shot, 20 second image.

•  Ed and I both viewed, with binos, M4, a startlingly huge globular in Scorpius.  We also viewed another very bright globular cluster in Sagittarius, M22.  We also viewed, with binos, M25, which is just above M22, and M8 and M21, which are located right in the bright central part of the milkyway, located to the west of the teapot astersism.  Ed also got M13, in Hercules, which was almost straight overhead.

• Ed seen one meteor.  We both seen many satellites, with a train of them passing, just to the south of Ursa Major around midnight.