Observation: 17P/Holmes from Montana

Comet 17P/Holmes was easily spotted via the unaided eye around 1:00 on
25 Oct. U.T. from rural Montana. The comet was visible as a 'star' to
the unaided eye. It appeared to be brighter than Delta Persei and
about equal in brightness to Gamma Persei.

With hand-held 20x80 binoculars the comet was a brilliant, fuzzy,
yellow to yellow-orange 'star'.

I made a more detailed observation and sketch from 1:30 until 1:52
U.T. using tripod-mounted 25x100 binoculars. The comet's brilliant,
non-stellar (distinctly larger than a star's image)yellowish pseudo-
nucleus was off-set toward the west-southwestern edge of the bright,
somewhat grayish, almost sharply outlined, disk-shaped coma. A hint
of a red-orange outer edge to the coma was suspected; but the
binocular objectives were achromats, making this part of the
observation somewhat suspect.

Of all the comet's I've seen, this one appears least cometary in
appearance. It looked more like a brilliant planetary nebula or a
distant thermo-nuclear fireball! If the reader gets a chance to
observe this object: Don't let the full moon stop you!!

Under the light of an almost full moon, my NELM was at least 5.0. My
sky transparancy was excellent. The nearly full moon appeared
"white" (as opposed to yellow or orange) in the bright, twilight sky
shortly after sunset.

Unfortunately a problem prevents me from making postings and uploading
images to my blog. Hopefully that situation will be remedied sometime
soon.

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.
http://cejour.blogspot.com
http://www.rangeweb.net/~sketcher

wrote:

Comet 17P/Holmes was easily spotted via the unaided eye around 1:00 on
25 Oct. U.T. from rural Montana. The comet was visible as a 'star' to
the unaided eye. It appeared to be brighter than Delta Persei and
about equal in brightness to Gamma Persei.

With hand-held 20x80 binoculars the comet was a brilliant, fuzzy,
yellow to yellow-orange 'star'.

I made a more detailed observation and sketch from 1:30 until 1:52
U.T. using tripod-mounted 25x100 binoculars. The comet's brilliant,
non-stellar (distinctly larger than a star's image)yellowish pseudo-
nucleus was off-set toward the west-southwestern edge of the bright,
somewhat grayish, almost sharply outlined, disk-shaped coma. A hint
of a red-orange outer edge to the coma was suspected; but the
binocular objectives were achromats, making this part of the
observation somewhat suspect.

Of all the comet's I've seen, this one appears least cometary in
appearance. It looked more like a brilliant planetary nebula or a
distant thermo-nuclear fireball! If the reader gets a chance to
observe this object: Don't let the full moon stop you!!

Under the light of an almost full moon, my NELM was at least 5.0. My
sky transparancy was excellent. The nearly full moon appeared
"white" (as opposed to yellow or orange) in the bright, twilight sky
shortly after sunset.

Unfortunately a problem prevents me from making postings and uploading
images to my blog. Hopefully that situation will be remedied sometime
soon.

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.
http://cejour.blogspot.com
http://www.rangeweb.net/~sketcher

Only Greg Cruinklaw is allowed to post on this subject at SAA -
Crinlaw's Law.

On Oct 24, 10:30 pm, wrote:
snip all

Here's my image taken last night from Utah. - Canopus56

http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/v/k...3_17P.PNG.html

"canopus56" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Oct 24, 10:30 pm, wrote:
snip all

Here's my image taken last night from Utah. - Canopus56

http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/v/k...3_17P.PNG.html


Nice catch.

George

If this comet breaks apart is there any way we could get a meteor
shower out of it? I'm not really an orbits kind of guy but willing to
learn.

Should be clear tonight so maybe I'll get a peak at it.

Alvan Clark

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:50:42 -0700, wrote:

If this comet breaks apart is there any way we could get a meteor
shower out of it? I'm not really an orbits kind of guy but willing to
learn.

No. The comet has a perihelion distance of over 2 AU, and the closest it
ever gets to the Earth is a bit over 1 AU. To produce a shower, it would
need to have an orbit that crosses Earth's.

Of course, small bodies in the Solar System evolve inward, so given
enough time something could produce a sporadic meteor. But not for a
long, long time, and no debris coherent enough by then to result in a
shower.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Nice,

Here's mine (Through very smokey Orange County skies):
I went out last night to see if I could find the Comet that just
brightened up in the last couple of nights. Naked Eye was not working
too smoky from the wildfires and very moonlit. I found it in Binocs and
decided to try imaging it.

Here is the result:
http://www.ocastronomers.org/astroim...um.asp?ID=5762

This is a stack of 109 1 & 2 sec. images from my Canon 20D stacked with
DSS using comet stacking. Total exposure time was about 3min 22sec.

It's nice having an observatory I can open and shut down quickly.



canopus56 wrote:

On Oct 24, 10:30 pm, wrote:
snip all

Here's my image taken last night from Utah. - Canopus56


http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/v/k...1023_17P.PNG.h
tml



--

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:50:50 -0700, canopus56
wrote:

Here's my image taken last night from Utah. - Canopus56

And here's what I was able to get from Colorado:

http://www.cloudbait.com/gallery/comet/holmes.html

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:50:50 -0700, canopus56
wrote:

Here's my image taken last night from Utah. - Canopus56

And here's what I was able to get from Colorado:

http://www.cloudbait.com/gallery/comet/holmes.html


Unlike Chris' nicely processed image here is my version. Pushed way too
far in an effort to show the very subtle fan shaped tail.


http://www.celestial-images.com/Imag...mes-17P-L.html


Also imaged it in Ha.


Regards

Bill

On Oct 25, 2:38 pm, "William R. Mattil"
wrote:
Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:50:50 -0700, canopus56
wrote:

Here's my image taken last night from Utah. - Canopus56

And here's what I was able to get from Colorado:

http://www.cloudbait.com/gallery/comet/holmes.html

Unlike Chris' nicely processed image here is my version. Pushed way too
far in an effort to show the very subtle fan shaped tail.

http://www.celestial-images.com/Imag...mes-17P-L.html

Also imaged it in Ha.

Regards

Bill

Very cool. Here's my final and collage about the orbit and lack of
tail. Quantizing my pic, I can see that the comet's cloud is not
exactly spherical - hinting at a possible tail.

Final 17P, cropped, resized
http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/v/k...s/005.jpg.html

Collage about the orbit and lack of tail:
http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/v/k...p_kaf.jpg.html

- Canopus56