New Bright Amateur Comet C/2012 C2 Bruenjes

Amateur Astronomer Fred Bruenjes from Missouri, USA has discovered the new comet. He took 30-s CCD exposures taken on two nights with a 0.36-m f/2.0 Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector on February 11.1 & 12.08. The new comet has been designated C/2012 C2 Bruenjes. Read his discovery story by clicking the following link:


http://www.moonglow.net/ccd/comet/index.html

A Comet Meets A Globular Cluster!

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd was just 36' SSW of the beautiful Globular Cluster Messier 92 in Hercules on the morning of 3rd February 2012. To capture it in my camera I used sky-watcher 102mm short-tube refractor on EQ5 mount. The mount wasn’t operated with motors to take longer exposure but I decided to take few images of shorter exposure with high ISO and later stack them using the deep sky stacker.

Camera: Canon EOS 550D

Telescope: Sky-watcher 102mm f/5 refractor

Mount: EQ5 without motors

Exposure: 13x4 seconds at ISO 3200

I guided the telescope manually keeping my eye in the view finder and keeping the globular cluster in the centre of the cross hair. I had to re-centre the cluster every time I take another shot!

MY SOON TO BEGIN COMET HUNTING PROJECT

Sky-watcher 102mm, EQ5, Canon EOS 550D

The year 2011 ended with just 26 visual comet hunting sessions. I brought a new 10" Sky-watcher Dobsonian Telescope by selling my old 8" Newtonian. Now I scan for comets visually using the Orion 2" Q70 38 mm eyepiece. As the chances of discovering new comets visually are getting less now I have decided to start Digital Camera Comet Hunting. For this new project I decided to buy a short-tube refractor and the equatorial mount. After searching in the web I considered the Sky-watcher 102 mm (4") short-tube refractor. The mount I purchased is the EQ5. The load capacity of this mount is 9 kg. My equipments will weight around 5 kg so there won't be tracking problems. Right now I am waiting for its dual axis tracking motors and I guess I will learn stacking images until the motors will arrive! I am still preparing the new methods for comet hunting using this new equipment. I will keep posting the updates in this blog regarding this new project.

NEW BRIGHT AMATEUR COMET C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)

C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) discovered on 2011 Nov. 27, by Terry Lovejoy using a 0.2-m reflector and CCD in the course of his routine comet searching from Thornlands, Australia. This is his third comet discovery. The comet is a member of the Kreutz group but seems intrinsically faint. Thus a bright comet at perihelion or a survival of it seems questionable. The comet will remain a southern hemisphere object close to the sun. 


Mpec for new comet C/2011 W3 (LOVEJOY) has just been issued:
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K11/K11X16.html


you can see the latest pic of the comet here:
http://members.westnet.com.au/mmatti/sc.htm

SIDING SPRING SHUTTING DOWN

The most smashing news for now is this...

All of us here would have heard of Rob McNaught and Gordon Garradd, of the several McNaught and Garradd comets fame. The two-man team at the Siding Spring Survey in Australia, McNaught is history's highest comet discoverer with 67 comets under his belt, and Garradd scores a decent 17 (source: comethunter.de).

This southern sky patrol of near earth objects and comets is coming to an end in late October, due to funds exhausting! You can read Garradd has to say in his private interview:

http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10012207/Nightly-news-astronomy-Meet-Comet-Discoverer-Gordon-Garradd.html

The news is pretty sad for the astronomy, especially comet fraternity, because now we won’t get to hear anymore comets by their name. However...it comes as a good breakthrough, for someone like me, that the only major threat and competition from the southern hemisphere is eliminated!
That means I would now quote an opportunistic remark here: It's time we begin our southern sky patrol...!

- Report: Amar Sharma (BAS-Bangalore, India)