Close Up of Comet 17/P Holmes 25 Oct 2007

Well it seems that this comet is bigger than last night (Oct 24th), I could easily spot it in bright twilight after sunset this evening at 6.50pm local time with my 15x70mm binoculars. At 10:45pm, I set up my C80ED refractor to get a close up of this comet, and it is quite fuzzy and hard to focus in the eyepiece. It still is the same colour (yellow) and magnitude (2.5) as of last night, so I can see that there is no change in the apperance of the comet apart from it's size in the eyepiece, and still no tail !

From this image, you can see that the comet's bright nucleus is slightly off centered from an overall very round and diffuse halo.

The show goes on.......

Keith..

Thats a fine image Keith. Holmes is definitely brighter tonight than it was last night. It is definitely brighter than delta persei. I make it mag +2.3 - +2.5.

Here's an image from tonight;



5" Maksutov-Cassegrain, Lumenera SkyYnx 2, 1029 frames from 1500, processed in Registax v4.0

There is some weird shockwave stuff going on at right, at first I thought it might be some camera artefact, however it shows on several images from different avi's with the comet on a different part of the chip. So whatever it is, it's real.

Keith, I just noticed this;

www.universetoday.com/2007/10/24/comet-1...s-erupts-in-the-sky/

They appear to be using your image without any credit given.

Correction: If you mouse over credit is given.

Some shot Dave, better than mine !!!

So whatever it is, it's real.

The 'shockwaves' you see are due to the comet rotating, and spewing out it's material that makes up the diffuse halo. Imagine like a halloween firework spinning around.

And for universe today, I was delighted

Keith..

Dave,
Are you referring to the black circle to the right of the core with a second black semi circle beyond it ?

Guys,
they are really good images for such a diffuse object. I mean, we clearly see some structure in your large shots - way to go. Both of your images seem to have the same orientation for comparison. That comparison seems to show that the tiny solid body is at the 7 o'clock position, and the majority of the coma trailing away into the 1 to 2 o'clock position. Sweet.

Keith,
well done on the UT site!