Garradd's tails (and a PN)

[acey]

Got to my dark site late on Monday night as the moon was setting, set up the 12" flextube, and my first target was Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd. Not the first Garradd I'd looked for, in fact - four years ago I tried for one of his earlier discoveries, but failed on that one. This one was very easy, though, a few degrees from M15, smaller and fainter, but very prominent in a 32mm plossl.

I noticed that a star to the south of the comet looked fuzzy, but others in the field did not. I began to realise I was seeing the comet's tail, and as my eyes became better adapted I saw that there were two tails, one running straight to the south, the other curving south-east. I couldn't see a clear gap between the two tails but their outer edges were well defined, particularly that of the curved (dust) tail, while the straight (gas) tail was best seen by its blurring effect on the background star.

My SQ meter was reading 21.2 (equivalent NELM 6.2), and after the comet I viewed various NGCs in the vicinity, all but one of them galaxies. The exception was planetary nebula NGC 7094, discovered by Swift in 1884 with a 16" refractor and described by him as "* in eeF nby, v diffic". With the 12" and Baader Hyperion zoom I could barely see a faint haze surrounding a faint star. With a TMB 6mm and Lumicon UHC the star disappeared and the nebula was better seen, fairly large, though still very faint and without detail. There are reports of it having been seen with a 6" frac (at a site with limiting mag 7) but I found it a pretty tough object.

[Sam]

Sounds like a great night and good job on observing NGC 7094!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Brilliant! nice getting a comet and NGC 7094. the latter is well beyond my C8, I am afraid (aperture fever sets in again;))