Comet ISON C/2012 S1 – 15th January 2013 «

Comet ISON C/2012 S1 – 15th January 2013

Being such a clear night, I thought I would try and bag Comet ISON as it was so close to Castor in Gemini.
At 16th magnitude, I didn’t think I had a hope.

But if you don’t try.
My trusty C2A software led me from Castor to the field the comet should have been in. I took 15x 2 minute exposures and stacked them on the comet, which I could see slowly moving almost in the centre of the field of view.

The comet is round and the stars are trailed. RESULT!!! Get in there!

Here is the whole field with the subs stacked on the stars cropped in the area around the comet, showing some faint galaxies in the same field of view. The comet looks trailed in this image.

I’d like to know the magnitude of the galaxy marked “?” in my image.
A much tighter crop of the area shows the comets trail distinctly.

5 Comments for this entry

Nigel Wakefield
January 18th, 2013 on 4:24 pm
According to Xephem, there is a star at that position designation GSC2.3 N8S5000225 m=13.44

Nigel
Eagleseye
January 19th, 2013 on 9:56 am
Thanks for that extra info Nigel.
I have also just found out that PGC 1945782 is located there as well, but I still cannot find its magnitude.
So I guess what I can see there is a combined result of the star and the galaxy as they can’t be separated in my image.

Dave
Nigel Wakefield
January 19th, 2013 on 10:26 am
Yes,

I have just been looking at a DSS 2R image and that shows the galaxy and appears to have a star superimposed on it.

Nigel
Nigel Wakefield
January 19th, 2013 on 11:08 am
Have just found it in HyperLeda. http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr/

Total B-band mag 16.23 +/- 0.39

Various other mags given

Nigel
Eagleseye
January 23rd, 2013 on 8:37 am
A great resource. Thanks for the link.
Dave