Sky this Week

Here is an image of comet lulin from around 6 am this morning.

Image taken this morning just before 6 am. Sky was mostly clear, transparency was excellent, no wind, temperature was 41 °F, and turbulence about 6/10. Equipment used, Nexstar 11 telescope, F3.3 focal reducer, Stellacam II at casegrain focus. Thirty images taken for each frame, Stellacam at 9/14 gain, integrate 128 frames. Dark subtracted, flat field adjusted, aligned and stacked with DeepSkyStacker. Brightness enhanced, cropped, and animated with Photoshop Elements.

Some have reported P2008X4 is brighter than Lulin, that doesn’t appear to be true, at least not through the Stellacam II. As you can see P2008X4 is fairly dim, I’d guess around Mag 11.

Image taken this morning just before 6 am. Sky was mostly clear, transparency was excellent, no wind, temperature was 41 °F, and turbulence about 6/10. Equipment used, Nexstar 11 telescope, F3.3 focal reducer, Stellacam II at casegrain focus. Thirty images taken for each frame, Stellacam at 9/14 gain, integrate 128 frames. Dark subtracted, flat field adjusted, aligned and stacked with DeepSkyStacker. Brightness enhanced, cropped, and animated with Photoshop Elements.

Here is the moon from this morning at 6:27 am MST, lunation 20.0.

Sky mostly clear, turbulence 5/10, transparency very good.
Equipment: Celestron Nexstar 11, F6.3 focal reducer, Canon Xti at cassegrain focus. ISO 400, 1/400 sec exposure, stack of 70 medium jpeg with Registax4.

Comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin) was discovered July 11, 2007 by Quanzhi Ye, a student at Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China). This one is unusual in that moves in the opposite direction of the planets. Its trajectory is parabolic indicating that it may be on its first trip through the inner solar system. As it moves away from earth in late February, it will appear to move very fast, about 5 degrees per day. It is estimated to reach magnitude 4.5 in late February.

I was able to spot it in 10×50 binoculars, though difficult.
Image is from 5:49 to 6:06 am MST this morning. Mostly clear, occasional thin clouds, temperature 37 deg. F, no wind, location Louisville, CO. Transparency good, turbulence 5/10. Equipment: Nexstar 11, F6.3, Canon Xti Med Jpeg, 20 sec exposures, ISO 1600. Dark subtracted and aligned with DeepSkyStacker-3.2.1, levels adjusted with Photoshop Elements.