Archive for December 2nd, 2007

Comet 17P/Holmes

Posted by anthony

Comet 17P/Holmes continues to put on a show for skywatchers willing to brave the cold weather. After an incredible run of clear skies through much of the fall, skies turned snowy here in Park City. Storms have been passing over or very near the area for much of the last week or so. This wasn’t too bad as it coincided with the large phases of the moon. Now that the moon has vacated the scene, its nice that skies have taken a break. I was wondering what Comet Holmes would look like after this extended absence. I was also wondering where it’d moved to. Well, first of all, its still very near Mirfak (alpha Perseus). Now, a couple of degrees to the southwest of the bright star. Quite easy to find once my eyes were dark adapted. The comet isn’t quite as bright as it was a couple of weeks ago but it continues to grow. It’s almost filling the eyepiece, perhaps 3/4* in diameter?

The accompanying image represents (3) 60 second exposures and (1) 100 second exposures at ISO1600 using the Canon Digital Rebel XTi at prime focus through my Astro Physics Starfire 160 Refractor. I stacked the raw images using RegiStax 4 and then ran it through the Curves function in GIMP. Finally, I reduced the noise using Neat Image.

This image has a bit of a reddish color to it. This comes mostly from the 100 second exposure. I think there was a bit of moisture in the atmosphere that got picked up at ISO1600. It was a sharp, detail filled image, so I left it in. I’m now too sleepy to reprocess it… so this is how its going out the door