Comet C/2022 E3 leaving the solar system

Clouds, clouds, clouds, and then more clouds. But on February 8th when it looked like another cloudy night, there was a break between a cloud deck to the west and a cold front that just passed to the east giving me about 6 hours of mostly clear skies. Since I was hoping to get some more images of this comet before it left for good (well, at least for another 50,000 years) I had to set up quickly and take the opportunity presented to me.

The optics were still not up to par - the stars at the edges and corners of the field were still showing some severe signs of coma and out of focus (as I mentioned in my previous post on January 31). This made the postprocessing a bit difficult, and I had to pull out a few tricks to get the subs to stack properly. 

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) - February 8, 2023
William Optics ZenithStar 61;  ZWO ASI2600mm
2h57m total integration time

As anticipated, the comet had dimmed quite a bit and I was not able to get the ion tail to show clearly (may be due to some of the thin clouds that were still present and the fact that the moon was nearly full). If I stretch the image a bit more you can just make out the tail, but the quality of the overall image degrades a lot. So I decided to leave well enough alone.

Still waiting for that next best naked-eye comet to arrive. But this one was fun to follow and image.

Comet C/2022 E3 seems to be dimming

Skies cleared just enough this evening to set up my equipment and capture some more subs of comet C/2022 E3. What seems to be immediately obvious is that the comet is dimming. Although it could be due to thin clouds, or the moon's interference, initial examination of the raw images show a marked decrease in intensity of the coma and the fan-like dust tail. The individual subs show no sign of the ion tail. Some of this is also due to the geometry of comet's orbit as well.

Once I process the images and see what the stacked version looks like I'll post here. Probably will take a day or two before I get the time to do the processing.  

Observing comet C/2022 E3

Today, comet C/2022 E3, a visitor that has not visited the Earth since the last ice age, will make its closest approach to our planet, or perigee.  Then it will speed away and not return for about 50,000 years. 

Although it will be at its brightest during this time, the full moon is joining the show and will make it hard to see without optical aid. But in the days after the full moon (Feb 6-22) the comet will still be very bright and well placed for viewing in the NE sky, almost directly overhead (see diagram below). The comet passes close to the red planet Mars on the 10th-11th, and then passes just to the east of Orion's shield on Feb 16-22.

It's closest point (perigee) is a distance of around 26 million miles from our planet, about 28% of the distance between Earth and the sun. You can also watch the comet live online on Feb. 1 in a free webcast at 11 p.m. EST (0400 GMT) from the Virtual Telescope Project.

Another image of C/2022 E3

On January 27 I set up my ZS61 (wide field telescope) with my ASI2600mm monochrome camera to try to capture the ion tail of C/2022 E3 which I was not able to successfully image earlier. This time I had success.

Comet C/2022 E3 - January 27, 2023
William Optics ZS61;  ASI2600mm
Total integration: 2h46m  LRGB

I'm still having optical issues with the field flattener/focal reducer on the ZenithStar, and so if you look at the stars in the corners you can see they are distorted. However, the comet image is OK since it is in the center of the field.

Details on the image can be found on my Astrobin page.

The 'other' bright comet - C/2020 V2

While getting ready to image C/2022 E3 on January 9, 2023, I had some time to wait for it to rise above my tree line and so I decided to go after the other bright comet in my skies, C/2020 V2, which I have been following (and imaging) for awhile.  Interestingly enough I think I read in one of my astro magazines that there are 11 comets in the sky right now. I'll need to go and check that, and maybe I might decide to capture them all (or maybe not!)

C/2020 V2 has been in the sky for awhile, and is still well placed in the north, hanging around the north star.

So here is C/2020 V2 with my OSC - no filters - plenty of light pollution to deal with. Image was cropped for the final photo.

Comet C/2020 V2 (ZTF) - January 9, 2023
William Optics GT102 f/5.5 - ASI533mc pro
80x120 sec OSC (One shot color)

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) brightening up

I know some of you have been paying attention to the news outlets discussing the arrival of a new, bright comet this February - but let me tell you there is a lot of sensationalism going on as well. Some claiming it to the comet of the century (when have we heard that before), others heralding it's triumphant return since it's last visit to the inner solar system over 50,000 years ago (that part is true - the part about the timing, not necessarily the 'triumphant' part).

But, nevertheless, there is indeed a fairly bright comet, named C/2022 E3, that has just passed it's closest point to the sun and is quickly approaching it's closest point to Earth. It passed the sun on January 12th and on Wed, Feb 1st, it will be closest to us - about 0.28 AU (astronomical units, where 1 AU is the distance from the sun to the earth, or about 93 million miles). As it does so it will continue to get brighter.

Photographs show a striking blue-green coma - a typical feature often seen in comets as they approach and get close to the sun. The intense ultraviolet (UV) light breaks down the large organic molecules present in the comet into the simpler ones, and it's the diatomic carbon (C2) that produces the green glow. Here is an image I was able to capture on January 15th using my WO GT102 APO refractor and ASI533mc camera.

This comet is rather large and you can clearly see the wide dusty fan of a tail and the green coma. There is a very, very faint (not easy to see on this image) ion tail dropping down to the bottom right which extends a considerable distance beyond the field of view. Later this month I plan to image with my wide field WO ZS61 to capture the ion tail.

Currently visible to observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the best time to view C/2022 E3 is in the early morning just a few hours before dawn. The comet's brightness right now is hovering at about magnitude 7, easily visible through binoculars or any small telescope.  In fact, at that magnitude level it is pretty bright thru a good telescope. And if the comet brightens to magnitude 6 or better, C/2022 E3 might be visible to the naked eye under good conditions - and that means a relatively dark sky with clear atmosphere. In the Baltimore/Washington area the light pollution is so high that it probably can't be seen without optical aid, but a decent pair of binoculars should show it well.

Here is a sky map that shows the position of C/2022 E3 as it races through the early morning hours of January 18 to January 27. Positions are for 5:00AM EST. 

After late January the comet moves further west and is well placed for evening viewing, getting higher and higher each day. Here are the positions from January 21 to Feb 4 at 9:00 PM EST.

Although the comet is nearest the earth on Feb 1, the moon (almost directly overhead and approaching full moon on the 5th) will interfere considerably. Sky and Telescope magazine provides this handy chart for the best times to see the comet based on the moon and altitude of the comet.

You can stay abreast of the comet’s magnitude, coma diameter, and more at the Comet Observation Database (COBS). Click on the Recent Observations link, then search for C/2022 E3. Another excellent source is Weekly Information about Bright Comets.

SkyAndRockets to remain my blog of choice

Quick update ... SkyAndRockets will remain the blog of choice for my astronomy and astrophotography related news. I decided to keep it for a number of reasons, not to mention the considerable amount of content already on this blog that would be lost if I moved off to another site.

My new Astrophotography website (announced in my previous post) has been migrated to a domain all it's own.  It can be reached at mdastro.com, and now contains more than 10 of my best astrophotos avaialble in either framed prints or infused on metal. Oh, and the metal versions are absolutely gorgeous.

Check it out. 

Announcing New Web site and new Blog

Great news ...

today I am announcing my new website and webstore for hosting my astro-photos!

After much consideration, I have decided to make my astro photos available for viewing and sale from a new website:  astro.mdfiberarts.com.

This new modern website now contains the best of my astrophotos and will be the new hosting platform for my blog. I plan to retain this blog for a period of time as it contains a good amount of past posts that may be useful for reference. If I am able to import these posts into the new site I will do so and then remove this blog at that time. However, all future blog posts will be done from the new site.

Please take a look, provide likes and dislikes, send me your comments, and of course, check back often. I will, of course, post to facebook whenever I add additional posts to this site.

So go ahead, check out the new "The Astrophotography of Michael J. Mangieri"

Non-Astro post

Strange title isn't it?  Well, I thought I'd post a picture of our Christmas tree here in Maryland.  After thinking about what might be in my future if I set up the 6' tree with all the trimmings having a very rambunctious 7 month old puppy around to notice all the cool new toys hanging just where she could get them, I decided that just a smaller tree on a table would suffice for this year.  And what could be better than a Star Trek tree??

So here it is, with the complete Hallmark Star Trek system.  The ornaments are based on the "Mirror Mirror" episode.  Each figurine has a specific sound track, the Enterprise has multiple lighting effects, and when the command insignia on the Star Trek emblem ornament is pressed a complete segment of the episode is voiced.

Hardware fixed; Imaging - not so much :)

Last evening we had a rather nice, clear and crisp night, which would generally be a great time to image nebulae. Only problem - the nearly full moon. So, rather than waste the opportunity I decided to mount my ZS61 wide field telescope and experiment with determining why I was getting such awful star images about the edges of the frame. 

This problem occurred last month when I was trying to photograph some wide-field nebulae. I thought it was just incorrect back focus adjustment, but then after a few hours of adjusting and readjusting I sent a note off to William Optics claiming that I may have a defective field flattener/focal reducer. I had heard that there were a number of units that had a defect, and since I got mine for a Christmas present from my wife last year (only got around to getting it configured this year!) I thought maybe I received a defective unit. WO told me that I may need to mount the camera on the flattener while the telescope was upside down to eliminate any tilt.

So I installed the ZS61 on top of my two other telescopes and when attaching the camera to it I realized that all this time I was setting the back focus incorrectly (I attribute this to old age!). Instead of measuring from the camera sensor back to the flattener (as WO tried to explain in their instructions - which weren't very clear) and then adding in spacers to make the total distance 56mm, I was assuming that the total spacing from the flattener side needed to be 56mm. I was about 20-25mm too long! Once the proper spacing was determined and the correct spacer installed I was ready to test the ZS61 with my ASI2600 camera.

Initial tests confirmed that indeed there was no defect in the flattener and the system behaved wonderfully. I still need to fine tune the spacing but I'm really close and pleased with the results.

Not desiring to waste the rest of the evening I set up to image the flaming star nebula, IC 405, in Ha light. I figured that my Ha filter was narrow enough to work even though the moon was only about 20 degrees to the east of the nebula. I took a 180 sec, 300 sec and 600 sec exposure. My normal process is to image the stars in RGB at 60sec and the narrowband data at 300sec. However, I've been thinking that I need to increase my exposure times to 10 minutes to gather more signal. The results of the three runs showed significant improvement using the 600sec time. This, of course, has its drawbacks - if anything goes wrong during that long exposure (plane or satellite crossing, wind, etc.) 10 minutes of precious imaging time is wasted. And you need to spend a lot more time to get the 30+ images to reduce the noise and increase signal-to-noise ratio. But the result seems to indicate its worth it.

So I set the sequence to run forty 10min subs of IC 405. 

Today I started to process the Ha data from the run last night. As soon as I ran the Subframe Selector process on the images to reject the poor ones (stars that trailed; any dim image due to possible clouds; etc.) I realized that I was in trouble. ALL the subs were bad - yep, all 40! I had totally miscalculated the ability of my mount to track, unguided, for the long exposure time. Now my mount is certainly capable of doing so provided I run a sky model prior to the imaging run. Without that I would need active guiding. Well I didn't create the model, didn't use active guiding and so the images suffered for it. The trailing was too great. Argh. So be it; I'll set up again early next week when the skies should be clear with much reduced moon interference. At least I got the ZS61 working well.

Upcoming occultation of Mars

On the evening of December 7-8, 2022, those of us in the mid and western US will get a great opportunity to view a somewhat rare occultation of Mars by the moon.  For us in the east-southeast it will be a near miss. But it will be very close and definitively worth viewing.

During the month of December, Mars reaches opposition - a point that places the Earth directly between the planet and the Sun. And although this opposition wont be as close as the one 2 years ago, the planet is placed in a much. much better location in the sky - high up where atmospheric distortions and dimming are minimized. Most everyone is familiar with the constellation of Orion, the hunter. Mars is located above the hunter and can't be missed as it is glowing a bright red during the month. Its in a great location for anyone wanting to image the red planet. I may try myself later in the month if the weather cooperates.

So, with the combination of a fully illuminated Mars and a bright full moon, this year's occultation should be a real interesting event. Get those binoculars out and take a look. How long can you see Mars with the naked eye as the moon slowly encroaches on the planet before the moon's bright glow overpowers Mars' dimmer rusty red appearance? In areas where the planet will be completely covered, can you see it right up to disappearance? Mars makes it's closest approach to the Moon at about 10:50pm on December 7, 2022. Unlike star occultations where the star blinks out instantaneously (since stars are effectively just points of light due to their immense distance from us), planetary occultations take much longer as the moon gradually hides more and more of the planet's disk. 

I've provided a sample view of what Mars and the moon may look like from Baltimore, Maryland, as well as a graphic of the path Mars takes behind the moon for various locations.

Mars and Moon from Baltimore - approximatly 10:50pm Dec 7, 2022

2022, Sky and Telescope

For details on the opposition of Mars, and additional info on the occultation, head on over to Sky and Telescope.