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comet ISON

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Jitterbugdude

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Re: comet ISCON

I've been waiting for this for a loooong time. I still remember getting all excited about the comet of the century... Comet Kahoutek. I even went so far as to buy a pamphlet put out by Eastam Kodak on how best to film it. If this lives up to all the hype it should be pretty spectacular.
 

Knucklehead

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Re: comet ISCON

So how do you get the best pictures? You just had to leave that little teaser hanging out there dintja?
 

Southern Planter

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Re: comet ISCON

I'll believe it when I see it. There was a nice one that showed up in the early '90's that had a nice trail that was a yard long at arms length. But most hyped up comets end up humbugs.
 

Brown Thumb

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Re: comet ISCON

Remind everybody one hour before, So I can show my kids it, I will forget.
thanx
 

skychaser

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Re: comet ISCON

http://spaceweather.com/

Comet ISON is getting all the press, but another comet is outshining the media-favorite by nearly an order of magnitude. Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) is almost 10 times brighter than Comet ISON as it passes just outside the orbit of Earth in mid-November. Rolando Ligustri took this picture of Comet Lovejoy on November 12th using a remotely-controlled telescope in New Mexico:

The comet's pale green atmosphere is almost twice as wide as the planet Jupiter, and there are no fewer than three tails streaming behind the comet's nucleus. Sky watchers in dark sky sites say that can now see this lovely comet as a faint smudge using averted vision--no optics required. A telescope is, however, recommended.

Comet Lovejoy is one of four comets now rising in the east before dawn. The other three are exploding Comet LINEAR X1, sungrazing Comet ISON, and short-period Comet Encke, and the brightest of them all. All four are easy targets for backyard optics. Dates of special interest include Nov. 15-18 when Comet LINEAR X1 passes by the bright star Arcturus, Nov 17-18 when Comet ISON has a close encounter with Spica, and Nov. 18-20 when Comet Encke buzzes Mercury. These stars and planets make excellent naked-eye guideposts for finding the comets. Meanwhile, bright Comet Lovejoy is approaching the Big Dipper; if you can't see it with your unaided eye, a quick scan with binoculars will reveal it.
 

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skychaser

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Re: comet ISCON

So how do you get the best pictures? You just had to leave that little teaser hanging out there dintja?

You need to put your camera on a tripod to get any kind of decent shot. You can't do it holding the camera free hand. Set the ASA speed to 400 - 800 and lens to a low F stop like f 2.8 or 4. Set the exposure time to 10-30 seconds. You can shoot up to 30 secs before the Earths rotations starts to make star trails. The longer the shot, the brighter the photo will be and the more detail it captures. Set the shutter delay to at least 3 seconds before it starts the shot so any vibrations from your hand touching the camera dampen out first. Try a few different settings and exposure times to see what works best or you.

The comet will be pretty small in your photos but can be easily enlarged on the computer. Today's digital cameras have enough megapixels to retain the detail in an enlargement. Just about any camera that can be put on a tripod and shoot a timed exposure should get a pretty good photo. You can use a telephoto lens too. I use a 400mm set to its lowest F stop. This gives me about 4 times the magnification but you must reduce the exposure time to 1/4 to avoid star trails and blurring.

I'm going to try to get a shot of Lovejoy if we get some clear skies here. The forecast says we will have so clearing early next week.
 

Jitterbugdude

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Re: comet ISCON

Aaah, Sky just dated himself! The term "ASA" was officially changed to "ISO" sometime back in the 80's!
As for the pamphlet I had it was written back in a time when black and white film was available as well as infra red. The use of various filters was recommended. It also recommended what Skychaser just said and that is to take lots of pictures of varying exposures. I never did get Comet Kohoutek on film but I do have some nice photos of Comet Halley.
 

winston-smoker

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Re: comet ISCON

Comet Kohoutek was the comet that the Children of God cult (later called the Family of Love, and then simply the Family) predicted would "knock out Houston, Texas" in January 1974. Last time I checked, Houston was still there!
 

skychaser

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Re: comet ISCON

Aaah, Sky just dated himself! The term "ASA" was officially changed to "ISO" sometime back in the 80's!
As for the pamphlet I had it was written back in a time when black and white film was available as well as infra red. The use of various filters was recommended. It also recommended what Skychaser just said and that is to take lots of pictures of varying exposures. I never did get Comet Kohoutek on film but I do have some nice photos of Comet Halley.

lol Yeah, the "best if used by" date went by a long time ago on me. :D I used to burn through a lot of film (and money) back in the day getting a decent shot. That all changed with digital. Now I can shoot a hundred photos a night and not spend a cent.

I remember waiting for Halleys comet to return back in 89 and what a disappointment is was. Just a small little smudge in the sunset. The Earth was on the wrong side of its orbit for a good view and the northen hemisphere was tilted the wrong way.

Hale/Bopp in 1997 was awesome. We watched it coming in bound in telescopes for over a year before it became visible to the eye. You could see a jet of gas coming out of it and it rotated, and the jet spiraled around 3 times as it expanded out and became the tail. A friend and I used to set up our telescopes in grocery store parking lots and let who ever came along have a look. I must have shown it to at least a 1000 people.

The best comet was Yakataki the year before Hale/Bopp. It was a tiny comet compared to Hale/Bop but it did a perfect broad side fly by of Earth. The tail covered almost half the sky! I will never forget that one.

Here's a photo I took of comet Ikeya-Zhang passing above the Andromeda galaxy on April 4th, 2002. The photo was taken with a Minolta X-700 camera and 200 mm zoom lens on 400 speed film . This was a 5 minute guided exposure taken on a camera tracking platform I built. My guess is that the comets currently out there will look a lot like Ikeya-Zhang did.
 

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Jitterbugdude

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Re: comet ISCON

I also built a small motorized unit to compensate for the earth's rotation. I never used it on a comet, just mostly nebulae. We used to ( or I should say, my dad) buy film in bulk. I think each roll was 25 feet. We would then roll our own film into used canisters. Comet Halley for us on the East Coast was quite nice to look at.
 

skychaser

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Re: comet ISCON

I have a Celestron 8" scope that tracks. No encoders, or computer to run it though. You have to polar align it first the old school way. :p

Actually I have several telescopes. Most of them I built myself. My favorite is my 17" reflector I named The Blue Moon. I hand ground and polished the mirror and built every piece of the scope. I even silver coated the mirror. The main bearings are cut in the shape of a crescent moon with the silhouette of a face in the center and covered in a marbled blue Formica. It's pretty to look at in the day time, but even better to look through at night. I have a 21.25 inch mirror I spent a couple winters working on. It's all ground and polished now and waiting for me to find time to build a telescope around it. The view with that mirror should be truly awesome.

I took this shot of the North American nebula in Cygnus with my old Minolta camera and a 200 mm F 4.5 lens on Kodak 800 film, piggy backed on the C8 scope. It was a ten minute guided exposure taken in southern Arizona. This pict hung in the museum in Wellington, NZ for 3 months as part of a wonders of the universe display. It's a pretty good photo. I think I have better ones, but they liked this one and it's the one they wanted to use. :)
 

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chillardbee

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Re: comet ISCON

The leonids are coming too, this weekend in fact for the peek date. There are also 4 comets to the east in the morning of which the 2 well known Ison and Love joy but Encke and Linear X1 are there too.

Love joy may be good now But with us getting closer to it and as it is still approching perigee it's only getting better. But we have just had that burst in brightness with Ison. When Ison is just past perigee (nov 29)with the sun it will be a northern object once again and if it does survive perigee (it is a sun grazer) I think we are going to see a incredible comet.

But right now I'm focusing on the Leonids, with an expected rate of 10-15 per hour it isn't storm status but I got to try. Dang that moon too, of all the nights it has to be full but at least we are expecting clear skies. The peak for the leonids are on the evening of the 16th going into the 17th and if an outburst is going to happen it would be that night.
 
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