C-2022 E3 (ZTF), visual report

[Israel Sevilla]

Hi everyone!

On the night of 25 January, I made a quick exit into the countryside to see c-2022 E3 comet and here is the result of that observation. This time was done with my 12" dobson. If you prefer to read it in PDF format in a nice dark mode and with the support of some images that helps me to explain better myself you can check it in the web:

https://theferretofcomets.com/index.php/en/comets/

Please take into account those images are pictures not sketches. As you can read in my web they have been gathered from public databases, and this one in particular from a friend of mine, Fernando Ordoñez. What I have tried (quite successfully, I think) is to reflect how the object shifts with the change of eyepieces. The images can become a composite of several to show a better result. Also I have added a fixed rectangle to show the effect of the apparent field of the eyepiece. I play a little bit with the brightness and contrast to show how your eyepiece field is darker at lower eye pupil, but you lose details in the object. I mean, if you try to find exactly the same picture in the web you are going to fail. It takes a couple of hours (sometimes more) to generate all the pictures to get the better result, plus an extra hour to write down my voice-notes.

Panoptic 41mm (36x - 1º 54’ - 8.4mm). A very striking comet without being spectacular but a magnificent sight in the contryside. It has a very bright nucleus displaced towards the edge which is more defined. I do not see any color at the moment. The cloudiness surrounding the nucleus is spectacular with a very sharp arc and then blurring at 6 o'clock in my eyepiece. Playing with the averted vision and looking for contrasts on the black background you can see the tail. It appears as a very thin line not quite straight, and with a thickness of about one tenth of the front area of the comet. It is more easily discovered farther away from the comet as 1° and from there it can be traversed until reaching the comet itself. When this exercise is performed, you can see how the tail narrows as it reaches its junction with the comma and becomes a little better defined. Regarding its brightness, the tail is like an almost transparent smoke but appreciable in visual. I think the antitail is also noticeable since there is a little clearer contrast at 11 o'clock in the comet's nucleus. I have been a fool and I have not brought my pencils to draw it but it looks like a joy the truth. In the city it is a pale shadow of all the detail that is seen in the field.

 

Delos 14mm (107x - 41’ - 2.9mm). The comet's motion is seen almost in real time. With this new eyepiece I notice that the brightest part of the comet, its coma, is not uniform. In the direction in which the comet is moving it is more elongated backwards than in the opposite direction. The view is magnificent, richer in detail although I do not see the whole tail. I have to go through it moving the telescope. The colleagues here have made a napkin calculation considering the degrees that has the tail (we believe that a degree and a half approximately) with which to be more or less the same distance to the sun must correspond to 4,500,000 kilometers of tail generated by a boulder of 14kms in diameter. SPECTACULAR.

Ethos 8mm (187x - 32’ - 1.6mm). With the 8mm the view is sublime. I have lost some details of fainter brightness but the nucleus is no longer punctual but spherical. The coma is better appreciated, and the more elongated part (almost like a horn) now extends deeply on its outermost edge of the area towards which the comet moves. The tail is hardly visible, only the area closest to the comet. It is quite a show, even at this high magnification.

Clear and dark skies

 

[SuburbanMak]

Superbly detailed report thank you! 

[Epick Crom]

Excellent report and illustrations! I'm waiting patiently for this comet to become visible for us Down Under. Thanks for posting!

[DSviewer]

great post