Comet 17P/Holmes, Outburst 24th October 2007
Edwin Holmes of London, England was a regular observer of the Andromeda
galaxy, M31, so he knew the region very well. On the evening of 1892
November 6, with skies that were not very favorable, he finished making
a few observations of Jupiter and some double stars with his 32-cm
reflector, and then decided to take a quick look at the faint
companions of Mu Andromedae and the nearby galaxy M31 before quitting
for the night. Upon turning the reflector toward that region, he saw
what he thought was M31 enter the field of the finder, but when he
looked through the eyepiece he saw something different. Holmes said he
"called out involuntarily, 'What is the matter? There is something
strange here.' My wife heard me and thought something had happened to
the instrument and came to see." The object in the field of Holmes'
telescope was a comet with a coma about 5 arc minutes across and with a bright nucleus. |
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28th October 2007 This was my first chance to image comet Holmes during the outburst. The comet is quite bright, easy to find and easy to image. I used a Konus 80mm F5 refractor and a home made 150mm F6 reflector to image. The image to the left is taken through the 80mm refractor. A stack of 60 images of 2 seconds each. |
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Taken through the 150mm F6 relector at Newtonian focus. The core is burnt out in this image to try and bring out detail in the coma. A stack of 98 images, Gain 78, Gamma 0. |
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Same details as the above image, however I used a gain of 60 and a Gamma of 100 to avoid burning out the core of the comet. |
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The comet is rapidly expanding too. I took this image using a focal reducer which reduces the image in size by 60%. If you move your mouse over the image it will show yesterdays image at the same scale for comparison. Quite a bit bigger in just 24 hours. |
All in all a pretty wet evening. However I was blessed with half an hour of intermittant clear skies. Again a series of 99 stacked 2 second exposures. |
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Another gap in the clouds. This is a stack of 80 4 second exposures. A slightly smoother image as a result. |
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30th October 2007 |
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31st October 2007 |
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150mm F6 Roll over the image for an image to show the core details. |
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1st November 2007 |
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80mm | ||
150mm F6 Roll over the image to see a negative image, strongly processed to bring out some core detail. |
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5th November 2007 |
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80mm | ||
150mm Processed for core detail Mouse over for a negative image. |
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8th November 2007 |
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80mm | ||
11th November 2007 |
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80mm F5 0.6 Focal Reducer |
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80mm F5 | ||
150mm FR? | ||
12th November 2007 |
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80mm FR | ||
16th November 2007 |
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22nd November 2007 |
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80mm FR | ||
Comet Holmes and the Moon to the same scale |
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23rd November 2007 |
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80mm FR full moon close by |
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50mm lens | ||
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