Tonight there WAS a slight chance at seeing the comet, Friday may be better, but where do we go?

A big question now in my mind after visiting Island Lake last Sunday is where do I go to observe Comet Panstarrs today and more importantly Friday evening.

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Update, looks like the weather conditions have changed and more clouds are predicted now.  It looks like there will be no viewing of the comet from the Lincoln Park, Allen Park area the next two nights.

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It may be clear enough in this area to view it.  It may be clear enough at Island Lake to view it out near Brighton Michigan.  Island Lake is located near Kensington Metropark.  Quite a far ways away from us and also there are other sites out there that the FAAC club uses to view the comet.  The comet might even be visible for a few minutes, maybe 5 to 10 minutes when it's up high from HJRO, but only with telescopes outside of the observatory.

I enjoyed the other views even though it was very cold from Island Lake, do to the darker skies.  I feel like driving out to a darker sky site for Friday, but I'm not certain yet that I'll do that.  I don't know if I'll stay around locally and watch the comet from Allen Park or try to view if from another location.

I'll try to post an update and send messages to some of you, if I'm going to be in Allen Park.

Others of course can look for the comet from up on the hill, but of course your better off observing it with binoculars, now it will likely not be visible to the naked eye without binoculars.  Or use a "wide field" telescope, that gives very wide views.  A typical low cost narrow field telescope that you might own, may not work very well if you can't find the comet to begin with.  You really want something that can show the tail of the comet, so typical store bought long focal length telescopes may not do to well.   Better to have something to look through than nothing.   The telescopes we have been using for the most part have been wide field telescopes showing a couple degrees of view or more.

(A wide field shot processed with more of a purple oversaturated sky glow feel.)

(c) Greg Knekleian Panstarrs over Spring Mill Pond at Island Lake State Park, Brighton Michigan.

Cropped a bit below, with that same purple over-saturated feel.

Here's a different set of processed photos.  These are much like the earlier ones from last Sunday, but these have a different look.  These are not as accurate as the other photos were color wise.  This photo has more of a purple tone, because the processing that I did changed the colors a bit.  It's less accurate than earlier photos and technically is not showing the correct sky colors.  It has a nice feel to it, but has over-saturation which gives it a warm glow from many dots that were over-brightened.  It was also darker in some areas.  It gives an interesting almost painting like look at the sunset, maybe a cheap painting with some kind of back light shining through it.

The levels were really low and the over-saturation comes from my wanting to adjust these and bring it up with more processing.  The steps, in detail are not to important as these are basic shots of the comet and surroundings.   The basic steps was some DDL processing using Nebulosity (for Macintosh), then bringing up some levels with RGB curves in Adobe photoshop, then changing the exposure center point and exposure slightly using Apple's preview utility, then noise reducing the image using Neat Image Pro stand alone.  In the end we get this look that shows a photo which almost looks a little bit like a painting with emphasis on a darker purple shade.  It also looks a bit like it's a photo that is backlit on a light box or something along those lines.  I like it, but it's not exactly accurate as a photo.

Now the question might come to mind, can I see Panstarrs as good as in the photos above?   You could not at that time see the comet as well as in this photo, because your eyes are smaller and gather less light than the camera did and you're not taking 4 second exposures like the camera did.  And furthermore for low light color photography, your eyes are not going to pick up the true colors as the light gets dimmer, your eyes are only 5% efficient in converting color to a photo in your mind.  The chip in modern cameras are 70% efficient in seeing color, so they can be setup to see much deeper colors of faint objects.

These shots show how Panstarrs would look through a nice pair of binoculars at a dark sky site.

Ken Anderson who was out with me said he briefly saw the comet naked eye as was surprise how bright it actually was.  But he soon lost it even after claiming to see it once.  So it's not an easy object to see without some optical aid.   Now that the comet is moving away from the sun it will be even fainter and more difficult to pick up.   Pretty soon you'll need a nice sized telescope to see it well and the midsized binoculars with lower power may not perform very well.   We'll have to start bringing out bigger telescopes to see it.