Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann and Spiral Galaxy IC 2269

Periodic comet Schwassmann-Wachmann (29P) is a funny body of unpredictable behaviour. It frequently shows rather sudden increases in brightness which are followed by an expansive wave of material, only to fade away rather abruptly afterwards.

A very detailed graph of the nuclear activity of comet 29P can be seen at Comets_Obs database. This shows the magnitude of the nucleus using a 10"x10" box.

http://www.astrosurf.com/cometas-obs/29P/multi.htm

A new refinement to this curve has just been added by Julio Castellano at Comets_Obs to try to better understand what is going on in the "core": it consists of an adjustment to the 10X10 magnitude data to account for the absolute distance of the comet .

http://astrosurf.com/cometas-obs/_MHDC/29P/

The most recent outburst of activity ocurred on September 15 (IAUC 8978) and was reported (another first!) by acomplished observer Juan Antonio Henríquez Santana at station MPC J51. His images reveal the comet a two-full magnitudes brighter than previously observed.

I imaged the comet on October 26 early in the morning when the comet was at a decent height above the Eastern horizon. The coma has grown in size to 3.5' and is now more transparent as the material has started to dissipate.

Low excentricity comet C2008 T1 Boattini

On the night of October 1, a supicious object was posted on the NEO confirmation page. When I started imaging it, there were only few observations by the original discoverer (Andrea Boattini at Mt. Lemmon) and some other observatories. Local conditions were only marginally good (no Moon but mediocre seeing) and the body was crossing a star-populated field, so the only images I could take barely allowed to pinpoint is astrometric coordinates. The real cometary nature of this object was then confirmed by several other observers.

According to preliminary calculations by Brian G. Marsden, C2008 T1 is a very short-period comet that experienced a very close encounter with Jupiter in 2003.

199P/Shoemaker wakes up

Sometime in the last couple of days periodic comet 199P/ Shoemaker went into outburst. Gustavo Muller (MPC J47) was the first observer to report an amazing brightness increase as the comet went from being a 17.90 mag. object in mid-July to reaching 14.53 mag. (10" arc seconds box) on August 3, 2008. An image of the first report can be seen at his site: http://astrosurf.com/nazaret/images/cometas/199/199-080803-J47.jpg

With the very recent memory of 17P/Holmes in mind (also discovered from the Canary Islands by Juan Antonio Henríquez Santana, MPC J51), I decided to image comet 199P in spite of its terrible location in the sky as seen from my observatory (very near the Barcelona light dome).


A very bright core can be seen surrounded by a tenuous but evident envelope of material. The image is zoomed and no processing has been applied to the stacked image. The photometry is as follows and was calculated in the unfiltered images for different boxes with FOCAS software (by Julio Castellano) against the USNO A2.0 R catalogue.

                     10x10  20x20  30x30  40x40  50x50  60x60
FECHA      HORA          ±     ±      ±     ±      ±      ± 
---------- --------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
04/08/2008 20:08:47  14.48  14.26  14.18  14.16  14.14  14.15
04/08/2008 20:08:47   0.04   0.07   0.13   0.12   0.08   0.09

On August 7, 2008 I took more images in spite of the presence of a very young Moon.


Photometry carried out this second night shows a slight decrease of brightness in the 10" aperture but an overall steadiness (if not a slight increase) at the 60" box.

                     10x10  20x20  30x30  40x40  50x50  60x60
FECHA      HORA          ±     ±      ±     ±      ±      ± 
---------- --------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
07/08/2008 20:18:48  14.59  14.25  14.18  14.13  14.10  14.05
07/08/2008 20:18:48   0.06   0.11   0.12   0.11   0.15   0.16

Comet C2007 W1 Boatini at its best

What a difference some months make! Comet Boattini was less of an impressive sight back in march, but is now a very bright body displaying lots of detail, having now passed its closest aproach to the Sun at the end of June at some 0.8 AU.

A screen shot from "Orbitas" (a great free software package from Julio Castellano) illustrates how the brightness of the comet has been increasing as it crossed perihelion.

Last night I left my telescope capturing as many photons as I could, and co-added the images together. The resulting image is very lightly treated with only a log scaling applied. A funny comma shape has been revealed in the last couple of weeks in images aquired and processed by Giovanni Sostero and Gustavo Muller.


The "intruder" at the bottom-left side of the image is mag. 12.5 asteroid Pomona.

Comet 6P d'Arrest near perihelion

With Comet d'Arrest rapidly approaching perihelion and showing signs of life as reported by several observers, I decided to accumulate exposure of this body on the nights of July 22-23. I added a total exposure of 45' on July 22. The resulting image shows a short extension (tail?) of 28" at PA 227º.


On July 23 I captured an even longer total exposure of the comet. The aim was obtaining and even deeper image of the outter coma. The overall condensation of the coma has a diameter of roughly 21", and a fan-like extension seems to be developing.

Gallinero (2728 m) i Cogulla (2387) des de la Vall d'Ampriu

Hem passat la nit dormint a la Vallhiverna. Bé, és una manera de parlar, vam arribar a les 2 en mig d'una tempesta de mil dimonis.

La preparació de la motxilla és un moment important... el Sergi s'ha oblidat els bastons

El parking de sortida, i a la dreta el collet que ens proposem anar a buscar.
Al collet hi ha l'arribada del telecadira. Eren 300 m de desnivell sense massa descans.


Al cim de Gallinero s'hi accedeix sense cap dificultat pel fil de la muntanya. La vista ha de ser molt bonica, però nosaltres ens trobem dins un núvol.

Després de baixar al Coll d'Ampriu, ens enfilem a al cim del Cogulla. Són uns 200 m de pujada per un llom de pedres. Aquí es veu la carena i el cim.


Els primers en arribar. El cel amenaçador. Un mos i cap avall!


La Vall d'Ampriu de baixada.