Huge comet outburst reported, 17P/Holmes Options

[djellison]

Visible as a fuzzy blob to the naked eye last night ( beautifully clear skies here in Leciester - Mars was just spectacular)

Binos - just like a little diffuse cloud - no central brightness at all - just a little cloud.

Doug

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/holmes.html

Finally shows a tail in large telescopes:
http://www.spaceweather.com/comets/holmes/...el-j%E4ger1.jpg

[jamescanvin]

Finally shows a tail in large telescopes:
http://www.spaceweather.com/comets/holmes/...el-j%E4ger1.jpg

That is quite an old picture, I think that tail disconnected last week didn't it?

[ugordan]

That is quite an old picture, I think that tail disconnected last week didn't it?

Yes, it was taken on 4th November.

[ynyralmaen]

HST images of Holmes have been released... bit more featureless than I was expecting.

[tedstryk]

The detail visible toward the center, especially in the November 4 image, is incredible.

[Nix]

I just took some shots, it's been cloudy for weeks but now I got it







Nico

[MichaelT]

I was also successful last night. Even though there were many clouds around. When I returned home around 22:30 (21:30 UT) I noticed that it started to clear up a bit. Luckily I still had all my telescope equipment in my car. I put on some warm clothes and headed for the countryside, out of the city (near Hanover, Germany). I had just set up everything, polar aligned the scope and taken one 3 min exposure when the clouds moved in again .
There did not seem to be another chance for photos, so I put everything back into the car and headed back. I had just driven 10 km when it started to clear up, again...
So I went back. This time it stayed mostly clear for a longer period and I was able to take some more pictures (about 23:45 UT).
The first image is a composite of 5 x 3 min and 2 x 1 min exposures at ISO 1600 with a Canon 40D and through a Takahashi FS 60C refractor (focal length = 355 mm, f/5.9).
The greenish halo and the tail visible so nicely until about a week ago are completely gone.


The second image is from 4 November. It is a composite of several 2 min exposures (ISO 1600) with an AP 155 EDT (not mine, unfortunately ). Different Larson-Sekanina-filters were applied to the final image (the resulting images were than stacked) to enhance the subtle brightness variations in the coma. You can very well see three jets emanating from the center as well as some nice structures in the outer portions of the coma. The direction of the sun is to the lower left.


Michael

[climber]

Hi Michael !

Very interesting shots!
You can even use the 2nd one as an art object! Who could guess it's a comet!
So many details visibles.
Thanks for sharing

[djellison]

Was trying to figure out how to take nice wide field DSLR images of this thing without any means of tracking. In the end I decided to do multiple 8s exposures at ISO 1600, then stack them up hopefully eliminating some of the noise because the subject will move.

This is the result from just 4 frames.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Stu]

Very nice pic that Doug.

We had a great view of the comet at my astronomy society's special "Skywatch" tonight (last night now, I guess!) up here in Kendal, held next to the old ruined castle that overlooks the town. Around 30 people made the long hike up the hill to join us at the castle to see the comet, the Moon and Mars through our telescopes and binoculars, and they all seemed to enjoy themselves. The comet was still visible to the naked eye, but thrpugh binocs and 'scope it is definitely dimmer tho larger. Its "central bar" is more pronounced now in my 4.5", and it's still lovely to look at.

One of the best things about tonight was that quite a few kids came up, including a couple of the girls I talked to when I gave a talk to Kendal Brownies last Monday, to help them all get their "Stargazer" badge... one of them, 9yr old astronaut-in-waiting said that the comet looked like "a spooky ghost..."!

[nprev]

Nice article (with a very nice set of pics) about Holmes on the S&T website. Seems that its orbital history has been evolving due to Jupiter's influence, might have set up the circumstances for this outburst.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/11372856.html