Comet ISON observed

Albert, nice shot including the tail!

Did you use guiding for the photo?

John

Hi

Observed Comet ISON C/2012 S1 again visually:

2013 Oct 27 at 04.58 UT.
Diameter less than 2'. Coma uniform, with no central condensation visible.
Appeared very faint at the limit, so faint in fact I did not attempt a mag estimate.
A nearby 9.9 mag star was very easy and a 11.7 mag star was a good deal easier than the comet.

25cm refl at 144x.

Clear sky, but there may have been some haze. 22 day moon.

No longer very hopeful for a good showing in about a months time.

John

JohnONeill wrote: Albert, nice shot including the tail!

Did you use guiding for the photo?

John

Apologies for the delay John. I did use guiding but on a star not the comet, ISON was too faint to use as a guide star with my equipment. I did try asking the mount to track at ISON's rate but that produced a terrible result. Stacking shorter exposures would probably have produced a better result.

Hi,

Little late on putting image of Comet ISON 2012 S1 (taken on 7 Nov 2013) on my site.

It was taken with identical setup and exposures with Comet Lovejoy 2013 R1. Comet ISON was much lower in the sky, also a tad more (dirty) processing was done
to being out the tail of ISON.

See: Variable Star Nights for the side by side comparison.

On the same morning visually I estimated Comet Lovejoy as mag 6.9. I did not estimate Comet ISON as I ran out of time, but I reckon it was about mag 8 and a half.
Lovejoy was easy in the 12x36s, while I really needed the 85mm refractor to appreciate ISON.

By the way I estimated Lovejoy this morning (9 Nov 2013) as mag 6.0.

John

Nice one John,
I was also out early this morning to have a look for the comet, by the time I saw it the sky was starting to brighten from the sunrise, so I couldn't make a magnitude estimation, but it was there.
Also got views of Jupiter and Mars,

It's been like Murphy's Law for me the past 3 mornings, especially THIS morning! Amazing skies overnight, get up to see ISON, and have the ONLY cloud band in the sky rest itself along the eastern horizon...