Cumberland Astronomy Club Comet Page


Click on the thumbnail image for a larger picture.

Comet Holmes NEW!! Photo by Steve Luzader
Comet Holmes on Nov. 30, 2007.  The exposure was 10 minutes on Kodak ASA 200 film.  The camera is piggybacked on the telescope.  The lens used is a 70 - 210 mm zoom set for 210 mm at f/5.6.  The bright star at the bottom left is Mirfak.  The small inset at the left shows the Oct. 31 image at the same linear scale as the new image.  The coma has increased in diameter by more than 4 times.  The diameter on Oct. 31 was about 375,000 km (about half the diameter of the Moon's orbit around the earth).  By the end of November, I estimate the diameter to be about 1,600,000 km, slightly larger than the diameter of the sun!  The faint fuzzy object below and to the right of the comet is the open cluster NGC1245.

Comet Holmes NEW!! Photo by Steve Luzader
Comet Holmes on Nov. 29, 2007.  This is a fixed tripod shot of the sky showing Comet Holmes just right of center and the Double Cluster in Perseus above the center of the left side of the image.  The exposure was 40 seconds on Kodak ASA 200 film with a 50 mm lens at f/2.  Compare this photo with the ones below taken in late October and early November.  The comet has grown in size until it is larger than the Double Cluster and has moved to the opposite side of Mirfak. 


Comet Holmes in the 8 inchPhoto by Steve Luzader
Comet 17P/Holmes photographed on October 31, 2007. The exposure was 2.5 minutes through my 8-inch SCT at f/10 on ASA 400 film.


Comet HolmesPhotos by Steve Luzader
This montage shows photos of Comet Holmes taken on two nights one week apart, October 28 and November 4.  The comet is the bright object near and just above center in each picture. On October 28, four days after its outburst, it was bright and appears nearly stellar. One week later it has moved relative to the background stars and appears as a distinct disk. The exposures were both 20 sec on ASA 400 film with a 50 mm lens at f/1.8. The camera was mounted on a tripod.

Comet Holmes montage Images by Steve Luzader
This montage shows images of Comet Holmes taken on three nights.  The October 31 and November 3 images are stacks of five 5 second STV exposures through my 80 mm ShortTube f/5 refractor.  The November 2 image is a stack of about forty 1/2 second exposures taken over about a one hour period through my unguided 80 mm f/6.5 apochromat.  The final image was rescaled to match the angular magnification of the ShortTube images.  The comet has increased dramatically in size over the three-day interval represented, and its average brightness has decreased somewhat based on measurements made with AIP4WIN. In the November 3 image, the diameter is comparable to the diameter of the Moon's orbit around the earth!  The rapid increase in size and decrease in brightness seems to support the suggestion that the comet brightened as a result of the emission of a large cloud of dust and vapor.


Comet Holmes by Mark RudyPhoto by Mark Rudy
Comet 17P/Holmes photographed on November 2, 2007. The image is a Registax composite of ten 8 second exposures with a Nikon E8700 digital camera set for a focal length of 71 mm at f/4.2.



Comet Holmes by Gus JohnsonPhoto by Gus Johnson
Comet 17P/Holmes photographed on October 29, 2007. The exposure was 90 seconds with a 135 mm f/2.8 lens on ASA 800 film.  Alt-azimuth tracking was used.  


Comet HolmesPhoto by Mark Rudy
Comet 17P/Holmes photographed on October 29, 2007. The exposure was about 8 seconds with a Nikon E8700 digital camera set for a focal length of 71 mm at f/4.2. The image is cropped from the full frame and has had its contrast adjusted.


NEAT 5/14/04Photo by Steve Luzader
Comet NEAT photographed near the Beehive Cluster on May 14, 2004. The exposure was about 5 minutes on Fuji Superia 800 color film using a 75 - 210 mm zoom lens set at 135 mm f/4. The camera was riding piggyback on my 8-inch SCT, and I was guiding on the comet. The exposure was stopped after 5 minutes because a band of clouds moved in.

 

NEAT 5/16/04Image by Steve Luzader
Comet NEAT imaged on May 16, 2004. This is a "stack and track" composite of six 20-second STV images taken through my 8-inch SCT at f/10 and processed with AIP4WIN . Because of the narrow field of view, only the head and coma are visible in the image.

Hoenig 9/2/02 Images by Steve Luzader
Comet Hoenig imaged in Ursa Major on Sept. 8, 2002 at Astronomy Weekend, Blackwater Falls.. Clicking on the thumbnail brings up an animated GIF of six images taken about every 20 minutes over a period of almost two hours. Each STV frame was a two minute total exposure (track and accumulate images consisting of either two 1-minute exposures or three 40-second exposures). Measurements of the displacement indicate a speed of 30 km/s across the field of view. A bright aurora was present during the first shot in the sequence.


Ikeya-Zhang 4/1/01 Photo by Gus Johnson
Comet Ikeya-Zhang photographed near Deep Creek Lake, MD, on April 1, 2002. The comet was near M31 at that time. The exposure was 70 seconds with a 135mm lens at f/2.8 on Fujicolor 800 film. Altazimuth tracking was used.

 

Hyukatake, 3/96 Photo by Steve Luzader
Comet Hyukatake photographed March 26, 1996 from my driveway in Frostburg. The picture was a 40 second piggyback exposure with a 135 mm lens at f/5.6 on Konica 3200 film.


Hyukatake, 3/96 Comet Hyukatake
Photo by Gus Johnson
3/27/96, 3:25 AM EST in rural Garrett County, MD
45 second exposure with 50 mm lens at f/1.9 on Kodak Gold 400 film.


Hyukatake, 3/96 Comet Hyukatake with Arcturus
Photo by Gus Johnson
Gus didn't provide any information about this picture except that the bright star to the right of the comet is Arcturus. Comparing this photo with one by S. Luzader and data from Sky & Telescope show that the picture was taken on March 23, 1996.



Hale-Bopp, 3/97 Photo by Gus Johnson
Comet Hale-Bopp photographed near Deep Creek Lake in rural Garrett County, Maryland. The picture was taken at 4:00 AM on 3/11/97. The image is a 2 minute exposure on Kodak ASA 1000 film with a 50 mm lens at f/1.9. Altazimuthal tracking was used for this relatively short exposure.



Hale-Bopp, 4/97 Photo by Steve Luzader
Comet Hale-Bopp photographed in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, near Frostburg. The picture was taken at approximately 8 PM on 4/2/97. The image is a 1.5 minute piggyback exposure with a 55 mm lens at f/2.8 on Fujicolor 400 film. The image seen here is cropped and rotated from the original so that vertical is straight up in the picture. The bright star near the comet is Almach in Andromeda, and the open cluster M34 is above and to the left of the comet.


Only two Hale-Bopp images are shown here. Check out the Hale-Bopp page for a larger collection of pictures by CAC members, plus links to other Hale-Bopp pictures.

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Last Revised 12/17/07.