Comet Ison

Last night was clear and cold, perfect time to go after this faint comet, which is supposed to be the comet of the century in December. Right now hovering around mag 16. Taken with a 206EDF F8 refractor and STL11K camera.

The comet was just visible in a 10 second exposure above noise level. This image consists of nine exposures of 5 minutes each, stacked, with the addition of one set of star images. The comet did move significantly during this time, something I did not expect to see. later on I will make a short GIF to show the movement in the 1 hour time period.

The comet is just above center in the wide field image, which spans about 1.25 degrees.

Rolando

Attached Image:

That is faint all right, but a nice capture.

Inspired by Roland's image, I tried imaging ISON last night (from the middle of Los Angeles). 206EDF scope with FLI PL16803 camera. Ten images of ten minutes each. As Roland said, it is moving pretty fast, so I made the images into an animated GIF.

Apologies for the quality - very bright sky here, and the seeing got worse as the sequence went on.

www.shbinstruments.com/ISON.gif

- Barry

Roland Christen said:

Last night was clear and cold, perfect time to go after this faint comet, which is supposed to be the comet of the century in December. Right now hovering around mag 16. Taken with a 206EDF F8 refractor and STL11K camera.

The comet was just visible in a 10 second exposure above noise level. This image consists of nine exposures of 5 minutes each, stacked, with the addition of one set of star images. The comet did move significantly during this time, something I did not expect to see. later on I will make a short GIF to show the movement in the 1 hour time period.

The comet is just above center in the wide field image, which spans about 1.25 degrees.

Rolando

Nice catch!

Eric

Ho Roland,
Very nice, I saw one of the comet recently taken with a bit more aperature...an ~80"... that showed a tail as well. Good catch!
Dave