Comet C/2017 O1

[rwilkinson]

The Ohio State University operates its All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae using a group of automated telescopes in Hawaii and Chile. Although these are designed to hunt for supernovae, on 19-July their survey also found its first comet.
I’ve managed to image it a couple of times, using COAST:

Comet 2017 O1 on 17-Aug. 3x 150-sec using C14 at f/10.

c2017o1_17aug.png (206.22 KiB) Viewed 4425 times

By September it's predicted to be 9th magnitude, tracking rapidly though the constellation of Taurus, so we should be able to detect it from Bolton.

[rwilkinson]

Here's another picture from mid-September (taken from a remote telescope in New Mexico).

Comet ASASSN on 17-Sep. 6x 85-sec with 250mm f/3.4 reflector

2017o1_17sep.png (226.28 KiB) Viewed 4314 times

The comet is currently in Taurus, moving North-East, so it should be well-placed in our Eastern skies after midnight.
But next month it should be a little brighter and rising earlier in the evening.

[rwilkinson]

This morning I got another data-set back from the COAST telescope:

Comet 2017 O1 on 28-Sep. 5x 120-sec with C14 at f/10.

c2017o1_28sep.png (176.67 KiB) Viewed 4264 times

There was an interval after taking the first couple of images and before the final three, hence the gaps in the star-trails.
This comet will be moving into our evening skies next month - look out for details in the next edition of The Bolton Astronomer, which will be out this weekend.

[rwilkinson]

I managed to catch this comet again in the early hours of this morning, using the COAST facility on Tenerife.
The difficulty of aiming at a fast-moving object with this instrument is setting its target co-ordinates: I'd used its position at around 2am, but my imaging run didn't start until some three hours later, by which time the comet was starting to track out of the frame.
I've made an animation to show how far it moves in 15 minutes:

C/2017 O1 on 21-Oct. 5x 120s with C14 at f/10

c2017o1_21oct.gif (605.45 KiB) Viewed 4148 times

[rwilkinson]

Now that this comet is in the polar region, I can get it from my own back garden (with one leg of my tripod in a flower-bed!).
Last night I caught it in Camelopardalis:

Comet 2017 O1 on 29-Oct. 45x 90-sec with MX716 on C8 at f/3.3.

c2017o1_29oct.png (157.87 KiB) Viewed 4094 times

The star-trails show how far it had moved in an hour or so.

[bbones]

Nice one Ross, keep them coming

Regards

Bill

[rwilkinson]

I found this comet again last night. It's quite close to Polaris, which is always an awkward region to access with an equatorial mount, and the difficulty was compounded by a polar alignment error (I suspect that one of the tripod legs had penetrated the frosty surface and sunk into the soft earth beneath after I'd completed my initial alignment).

Nonetheless, I did manage another image of this comet, which is now down to 10th magnitude:

The comet on 29-Nov. 32x 90-sec using MX716 on C8 at f/3.3

c2017o1_29nov.png (181.61 KiB) Viewed 3886 times

[rwilkinson]

I managed a longer run last night, with better tracking (but brighter moonlight):

The comet on 30-Nov. 68x 90-sec using MX716 on C8 at f/3.3

c2017o1_30nov.png (227.83 KiB) Viewed 3866 times