PANSTARRS (C/2017 S3) suddenly leaps three magnitudes

[Stub Mandrel]

Could this become a significant comet?

"APPROACHING GREEN COMET EXPLODES: A comet that could become visible to the naked eye in August has just exploded in brightness. Amateur astronomer Michael Jäger‎ of Austria reports that Comet PANSTARRS (C/2017 S3) brightened 16-fold during the late hours of July 2nd, abruptly increasing in magnitude from +12 to +9."

http://www.spaceweather.com/

[Stu]

Sounds very interesting. Will keep an eye out for it!

[cotterless45]

Cool , going to be low in the north east in Camelopardalis, before dawn,

Nick.

[Davey-T]

Let's hope so, I've been trying to catch it every clear night for a few weeks with no joy.

Dave

[alexbb]

This was during shooting, I had no time for stacking or blinking. Busy weekend is announced as I've never processed comets yet.

[Davey-T]

Good shooting, I took some subs of it last night but not looked at them yet, the sky was a bit murky and then the Moon appeared so not very good.

Dave

[alexbb]

Blink from this morning

[Helen]

If you fancy doing some science with your images.... try astrometrica http://www.astrometrica.at  It can be a little fiddly to set up, but once you've got the settings right for your equipment, location etc, it will calculate magnitude and position from your observations.  It will also stack based on the actual movement rate of the comet ?  It is good fun to plot the changing magnitude over time.  

You can also report to MPC and/or cobs

https://cobs.si

COBS has lots of other interesting comet stuff too ?

Helen

[Demonperformer]

7 hours ago, moise212 said:

Blink from this morning

Cool video.

[Cjg]

On 05/07/2018 at 13:33, Stub Mandrel said:

Could this become a significant comet?

"APPROACHING GREEN COMET EXPLODES: A comet that could become visible to the naked eye in August has just exploded in brightness. Amateur astronomer Michael Jäger‎ of Austria reports that Comet PANSTARRS (C/2017 S3) brightened 16-fold during the late hours of July 2nd, abruptly increasing in magnitude from +12 to +9."

http://www.spaceweather.com/

Thanks for the heads up, tried last night at about 1am, but couldn’t see it. Sky was bright to the North. Started at NGC 1502 and tried working my way across to where it’s meant to be.  A tough part of the sky to star hop in.

Chris

[tooth_dr]

I managed a few subs before the clouds rolled in Friday. My expectations were higher than what I saw lol

[Davey-T]

Also took a subs last night but by the time it was high enough to see from here clouds were drifting past the Moon was up.

Didn't appear very bright to me.

Dave