I may post a longer photo diary and more Panstarrs images as I start to take photos from HJRO

Panstarrs right now is high enough that the small Meade Telescope could "barely see it" as it rose high enough in the sky before the sun had risen.  The sun was rising however and the sky was getting brighter and brighter.  This coupled with the fact that we have a high street light just east of the observatory directly in the path of the comet means the comet cannot likely be viewed until it's quite high 15 to 18 degrees, would be my estimate in the East.  The comet was barely high enough to be seen this morning at around 6:10am.  I was at the observatory rather early at 5:30AM and was setting up hoping to see the comet.

I could see light pollution problems, direct lights shining on the telescopes as they aimed out of the shutter.  This light pollution had to be avoided as it would cause glare on the front lens of the refractor or the corrector plate on the C14.  To avoid the light I took a box top from a cardboard box and placed it inside the shutter, making the shutter wall and opening a little higher.  This light shield blocked off the  light from the streetlight and allowed me to aim low, actually looking past half the box and see the comet.  Well I couldn't actually see the comet, because I had the telescope setup with a camera on the small telescope.  And the comet could not be visually observed, as I didn't have a bright enough or large enough telescope.  My eye would of course shut down and likely not see the comet with a brighter sky.  But a photograph might show the comet and it did.

(Notice, part of the photo above is dark.  This is the shadow from a box top which I used to block out the street light, see inset photo.)  The photo isn't very good and the other ones I took showed less of the shadow and a more normal sky, but these had a brighter background as the comet had to rise fairly high and was being followed with a rising sun, making the sky even brighter.

The comet is now rising in the morning as well as setting in the evening while the sky is dark.

Because the comet is closer to the north and heading north, it's is a position that get's closer and closer (in a general way) to the north star.  If we thought of the sun being on a string dangling from the north star and swinging around the earth being suspended from the north star . . . and that string holding the sun had a small dot higher up on the string representing the comet.  Then in that case the comet or higher "dot" would swing below the horizon after the sun set and appear above the horizon before the sun rises.  The comet would be in a "circumpolar orbit" which is closer to the celestial pole.   So it would seem to go around the north star, but it would be going around the star in a smaller circular path.  This would cause it to rise and set at night above the sun in a darker sky.  Which is exactly what Panstarrs is doing.    As it moves closer toward the celestial north pole, Panstarrs becomes more visible and rises higher in the sky in the morning.  It's actual path is a little more complicated than I'm describing here.  (And frankly reading my description on this blog at this moment gives me a little bit of a head ache. . . so I need to actually rewrite this explanation better and revise this a bit.)

Objects like Polaris are in the northern area of the sky and due to the tilt of the earth we by living in the northern hemisphere can see them up in the sky in the morning and in the evening.  So the comet likewise is now getting into positions in the sky where we can see it after the sun sets and before the sun rises.

The photo above is not very good.  Hopefully I can get a better one during the next few days, as the comet rises higher each day.  The comet may not be very spectacular to view with a small telescope or binocular now because it's fainter.  At a dark sky site it might be worth checking out but you'll probably want a pretty big binocular or a bigger telescope that can show fainter objects.

The comet visually may not look very good, but we should be able to see it faintly and perhaps with some detail if we see it earlier in the morning.  I'm fairly sure we will be able to see it faintly with the C14 once it rises higher and may see a little bit of detail.  The tail detail might appear better visually as we view the comet under earlier and earlier conditions when the sky is darker.  Unfortunately the comet will grow more dim as it's going away from the sun now.  Once the comet is in the  magnitude 8 range, it won't look much better than a fairly faint galaxy.  As it becomes more faint, it's more interesting to see the comet in photos we may take or perhaps with the Stellacam for a low light video display of the comet.

The Stellacam with a well aimed Meade telescope should show quite a bit of detail on our video monitor and we may be able to capture that video and show some interesting photos from that setup as well.

Here is a little extra info on the photo above.
The comet looks to be quite small and it is in this photograph.  I'm not using a high powered telescope, because our little Meade refractor is mounted higher up and can see out the dome a little bit earlier.  This also is a wide field telescope and will show the comet without much of a hassle if we get close to the comet and look at a star fairly close.   A high powered telescope would not show as wide a field of view and we might only see the star I had the mount aim at.

To get the power of the photo we use a formula:  (focal length of the telescope divided by 50 times 1.6)
The telescope has a 480mm focal length.  A normal 1x photo on a 35mm full frame camera would use a 50mm lens, so we divide 480 by 50 and get the power we'd see with a regular 35mm film exposure.

But this Canon EOS camera doesn't have a full frame sensor, it has a 3/4 frame sensor and we have an image projected on a screen (the sensor) that is smaller, so that cuts off the size of the image and actually crops it magnifying it compared to a larger more expensive sensor.   So this will give is a higher power, automatically cropped image.  We multiply the power we'd have with a full frame sensor by 1.6.

SO PLUGGING IN THE NUMBERS WE GET:

480mm divided by 50 for a full frame 35mm camera.  For a Canon EOS T1i we multiply that result by 1.6.  The photo above was taken at 15.36 power or about 15 power.

(480/50 times 1.6) is about 15.

The comet will look about as big as it would in 15 power binoculars or a 15 power telescope in our photograph.

How I found Panstarrs with the Losmandy mount.

I had a minor problem which was not being familiar with the newer computer setup that we are implementing at HJRO.

I decided to try to find the comet with the Losmandy mount, but that mount didn't have Panstarrs defined inside the controller.  I needed to find an object close to the comet to locate the comet.

I chose a star near Panstarrs.  I chose this from my iPad Sky Safari App which has the correct orbital data for the comet.

Below are two screen shots showing where that star near Panstarrs was located in relation to the comet.


The star centered in the field of view above.

The comet below on one side of the star.





As the Meade has a wide field of view and the camera I used has a fairly large sensor I figured I'd have a good chance at getting a photo of the comet, if the mount was close and brought the star close to the center of the little Meade refractor telescope's field of view.   It did and we can see the comet in the frame.  The comet isn't perfectly framed however, but at least we are able to see the comet.