Re: [BAA Comets] NEOWISE close-up
Nick James 21 Jul 2020 07:11 UTC
C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is now high enough that I can image it using my
telescope. I start imaging when the sky is bright since any more than
10s exposure currently saturates the central part of the coma. There is
a lot of detail in the inner coma and tail and this is an unsharp masked
image of the central 0.5 degree showing streamers in the tail and
multiple shells in the coma.
http://www.nickdjames.com/Comets/2020/2020f3_20200720_2126_ndj.jpg
I remember back in 1997 that Terry Platt produced timelapse movies of
the inner coma of C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp showing the shells spiraling out
from the centre. Here are the stills from that movie:
https://britastro.org/cometobs/1995o1/1995o1_19970328a_platt.html
I also attempted a wide-field image last night using a Sony A7s + Canon
85mm, f/1.2L lens but the light pollution here makes processing it very
difficult. It does show the ion tail stretching back to Merak and Dubhe
which are the two bright stars in the upper right of this image:
http://www.nickdjames.com/Comets/2020/2020f3_20200720_2242_ndj.jpg
Nick.