The Great Christmas Comet of 2011, 2011 W3 (Lovejoy) |
The Great Christmas Comet of 2011, 2011 W3 (Lovejoy) |
Guest_Sunspot_* |
Dec 2 2011, 09:59 PM
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Guests |
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=.../birthday_comet
Possible very bright sungrazing comet coming mid December - Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) Information in the link above. |
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Dec 21 2011, 07:58 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 723 Joined: 13-June 04 Member No.: 82 |
From comet-ml post #18990 by Robert McNaught:
QUOTE After several nights or mornings of poor weather, and the prospect of these continuing here at Siding Spring, I decided it was time to move. This morning gave an opportunity to find clear sky about 20km to the west, away from the mountain fog and orographic cloud. And boy, was it worth it! This is a most beautiful comet.
The tail was very obvious to the naked eye, rather brighter than the Milky Way in Circinus, Norma and Ara but not quite as bright as in Crux and Carina. The split between the dust and gas tails was clearly evident to the naked eye. 10x50 binoculars didn't show much more tail length, but structure was present, especially the "spine" along the southern edge of the dust tail, continuing past the bifurcation of the dust and gas tails. The end of the dust tail fades off very rapidly and naked eye, 10x50B and various photos have the tail reaching RA 15h54m Dec -40.0 (2000) The ephemeris position at that time was RA 17h02.3 Dec -34d56' (2000) giving a dust tail of 14.3 deg. The gas tail is perhaps 1 deg longer but fades away much more gradually and thus has a less well defined end point. The edges of the dust and gas tail are very sharply defined. The tail brightness from the bifurcation towards the head was quite uniform, but as twilight progressed, the tail near the head became lost in the twilight and I didn't see the head visually or record it on photos. This is not a strong conclusion, as I had to move to a better location to find a lower horizon and the sky brightness probably beat me. I'd be reasonably confident that from tomorrow onwards I'll be able to make some meaningful statement about the visibility of the head. To place this comet in the pantheon of modern comets (essentially subjective), I'd put it in the class of Hale-Bopp, Hyakutake and Bennett with this morning's view. I'll try to get some photos up later today. Cheers, Rob |
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